


I Really Do Try To Stay Out Of Trouble

by AlreadyPainfullyGone



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Stiles, Beta Derek Hale, Graphic Rape-like scenario, M/M, Pack Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:54:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2305529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlreadyPainfullyGone/pseuds/AlreadyPainfullyGone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has been a werewolf for about two hours when he accidentally becomes the Alpha of the Hale pack...things kind of go downhill from there. He's not sure what's worse, being Derek's alpha, or knowing that Derek would rather die than ever be in the same room as him again.</p><p>(Tagged with some dub-con themes, now, while I don't see anything that I've written here as being a rape, one reader has commented that it was triggering. So, with respect to that, do not read if you are going to be triggered by violent, but ultimately consensual sex, where both participants are acting on their wolf instincts, rather than on their human logic. In writing this I did so with the idea that both parties were completely willing to sleep with each other but not confident or assured enough of the fact that THE OTHER PERSON WANTED THEM AS WELL. So it was left to wolf instinct.)</p><p>So, I didn't want to have to come here and defend what I wrote, but, I don't want anyone else reading it and getting triggered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. But It Just Seems To Come My Way

**Author's Note:**

> Part 2 Coming soon

Stiles has been a werewolf for two hours, thirty minutes and sixteen seconds.

He’s been an alpha for two hours, fifteen minutes and approximately twelve seconds.

It’s been a weird day.

Actually, screw that, it’s been a weird three months.

First Scott gets bitten and turned into a werewolf, then creepy Derek Hale starts stalking them and hunters show up, and the Alpha starts killing people and Jackson tries to blackmail Scott into changing _him_ , and then Lydia nearly gets murdered (the thought of it makes Stiles growl low in his throat, and he covers his mouth quickly in case his Dad hears) and then, in the last three hours, he’s been kidnapped, threatened, forcibly turned into a werewolf, and committed his first homicide.

Oh, and now he’s an Alpha, whatever that means.

It wasn’t like he stuck around to find out.  And it had all happened so fast, as they say.

Once Kate was dead on the floor and Peter was advancing on them, all he could do was watch as Scott thew a firebomb over Peter, which weakened him but didn’t quite do the job.

Somehow it’d been Stiles who grabbed Kate’s discarded gun and, while the burnt, raging Alpha was rushing at Alison and Scott, Stiles had pulled the trigger, splattering Peter Hale’s red-hot-furious-psycho brains all over the nearest tree.

In the silence after the Alpha wolf dropped to the ground, Stiles could hear everyone breathing, their fast, irregular heartbeats. He was still changing, still being infected by Peter’s bite, but the hearing thing had kicked in about half an hour before he got to the woods.

The fact that it’s still going on means one thing – that whole story about killing the one that turned you being the cure? Bullshit.

“What. Did. You. Do?” Derek said, turning on him, rage etched all over his face. “You, stupid-”

“He was going to kill us!” Stiles shouts, and clearly something is very wrong because his body feels like it’s burning up with sudden fever, and his hair is prickling and suddenly Derek’s eyes flash blue and he looks down at the ground like he’s...scared or something.

“Stiles?” Scott says quietly.

“What?” Stiles snaps, “why are we acting like this is a bad thing? Peter’s dead, end of nightmare – can we just go home now?”

“Stiles...your eyes are glowing.” Alison says quietly, and he sees her hand tighten on her bow, and growls softly without meaning to.

“That’s because I’m a werewolf, thanks to his dick uncle,” he points at Derek, who is still tipping his head forwards like he’s afraid to look up. He glances at Scott and finds that though he’s struggling to maintain eye contact, he can’t manage it either.

“They’re red, Stiles,” Scott says, his voice low, clearly struggling for calm.

Stiles blinks, eyes darting for a mirror, ridiculous to be looking for one in the middle of the forest. God, his blood feels too thick, and hot and fast, like it’s pushing his veins open and pouring into his heart and head faster than he can handle. Everything is getting louder and sharper and it all smells like blood and fire and...and he can feel Derek, and Scott, like ghost limbs or something. He can feel them there.

“I’m...the alpha?” He shakes his head, trying to clear it, “no, I mean, that’s not...I haven’t even changed yet. I’m not even a proper wolf, yet.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Derek says, finally speaking up, “you were bitten, you killed the alpha, that makes you the new Alpha.”

“That’s dumb,” Stiles snaps, but he’s just playing for time, trying to catch his brain up. He wants to go home, go to his bedroom which is all comfortable and familiar and just the way he left it when he went off to prom only a handful of hours ago – when he was human, and not an alpha, and when the scariest thing facing him was the prospect of Lydia in evening wear.

“Stiles!” It’s Scott that shouts after him, and Stiles hears Derek mutter something to him about staying back, but he’s already running away from both of them, off through the trees. And he doesn’t trip once, doesn’t stop for a breath, doesn’t fall or run into a tree and he doesn’t pause until he’s home and climbing up onto the roof like Scott and Derek have done plenty of times already.

So now he’s sitting in his room, and he can hear his Dad moving around in his room next door. His Dad. How the hell is he going to explain this? Can he even begin to? What if Chris Argent and his wife come for him and they get his Dad by mistake?

His body cramps and he looks down to see thick black claws pushing out from him nail beds.

Forget the Argents, what if he gets his Dad by mistake?

Shaking, he goes into the bathroom and turns the shower on, climbing in and sitting under the cool spray. It always seems to help Scott, so it can’t hurt.

It’s not exactly painful, what’s happening, but it doesn’t feel good either. It’s sort of like throwing up – not great, and you can’t stop it, but it feels like your body’s doing the right thing. That it’s OK to let it take over for a bit, and stop fighting it because that’ll only make it worse.

He can still feel Derek and Scott, Derek more for some reason – maybe because he was related to Peter by blood and by pack. He knows Derek’s still out in the woods, which is good because he never wants to see him again - and Scott’s at home. No telling where Alison is, or whether Lydia is still in hospital.

Oh God, Lydia. The thought of her, bloody and pale on the lacrosse field makes him double up in pain as his teeth elongate. He wishes he had Peter Hale in front of him now, to rip apart with his bare hands, his claws and teeth and...

So maybe the Alpha thing is affecting him, a little.

By the time he feels in control enough to turn off the shower, strip off his wet clothes and climb into bed, it’s so late that all he can do is close his eyes and pass out.

*

Unfortunately, when he wakes up the next morning, he’s still an Alpha werewolf, and nothing short of a bullet to the head is going to change that.

Of course, when Scott first started changing it’d seemed cool, or something. It was only in the days after that first trip to the woods that Stiles had started to see the terrible downside to being a werewolf – things like blood lust (emphasis on the lust, where Alison was concerned) secrets, hunters, and the vulnerability to monkshood, amongst other things.

Stiles wasn’t in the ‘werewolves are cool’ camp anymore.

He was in the ‘werewolves get people hurt, and just when you think being one can’t suck any more, it does’.

He turns up to school the same as always, and tries to ignore the way that he knows exactly where Scott is the moment he gets onto campus. He also tries to ignore the way Scott and Alison both freeze when they see him, and the way Scott shifts a little to stand in front of Alison.

Most of all he ignores the slight prickle of anger that sets his teeth on edge, that this cub, this beta, thinks he can keep anything from him if he wants it.

So yeah, denial is his friend.

Possibly his only one.

“S’up Bud, all set for that chem test?” It’s weak, but he feels the tension in both of them slip down a notch.

“Didn’t have time to study,” Scott says.

“Well, we’ll have each other in summer school.” Stiles goes to his locker and starts working his combination, “have, uh, either of you been to see Lydia?”

“I called her house, her Dad said she’s still unconscious, but the doctors don’t think she’s in danger anymore – she’ll pull through,” Alison says.

“Good, good, so she’ll be OK,” Stiles feels himself relax a little, “any sign that the scratch...”

“She’s not healing fast – normal human speed,” Alison says. “Stiles...about last night,”

“Weird one, right?” Stiles says, “But seriously, I’m fine. Got my wolf mojo completely under control, at least until the full moon. No problem.”

“Stiles, you’re the Alpha,” Scott says quietly, “last night, after you’d gone, Derek was freaked out. I mean, he was trying to cover it up but...if he’s freaked, then I’m freaked.”

“Derek freaks out about everything,” Stiles says, “he’s too serious and one day he is going to get an ulcer. If werewolves can even get those. He’s Mr Doom-face, and anyway he’s probably just pissed that I outrank him now.”

Scott doesn’t look so sure, and Alison smells really unsure.

“Guys, it’s all good. Come on, let’s get to class.”

Stiles honestly believes it’s all going to be fine. Scott can handle being a werewolf, so can he. Being an alpha can’t be that different – it’s just like his Dad being the Sherriff, OK so there’s some uniform changes, a fancy title, but basically he’s still a cop – a great cop.

Of course, his Dad didn’t get his job by shooting the last Sherriff in the face. As far as he knows.

Basically, it goes fine for a week. OK so he can smell and hear a lot of new things (boys locker room? Hell on earth for the ole factory sense – and his favourite curly fries now smell like corn syrup and fryer oil that needs changing and rat poop and...they’re just ruined.)  And yeah, so, after a few days he starts sleeping on the floor in a pile of quilt, because the bed is too soft and big and empty. But that’s about it.

That and he is constantly aware of Scott and Derek, particularly, he’s aware of how Derek never leaves the woods, or even the clearing where his house is. Not even for a moment, not even for groceries or to pop by and scare the bejeezus out of Scott.

Stiles goes by Scott’s house a few times, paces around the rooms a bit while Scott watches without comment. He’s totally not doing it to mark the place out, so Derek knows that Scott is his friend first and Derek’s wolf-bro second. He just likes Scott and wants to spend time with him, and there’s new stuff to smell at Scott’s house.

No, things don’t get really weird until the first time he jerks off.

Uncharacteristically, and possibly because of the amount of murder he witnessed that night in the woods (two, counting Peter and Kate, plus Lydia’s almost-death), Stiles hasn’t touched his junk in anything more than a casual sense in a week.

But, when they get the news that Lydia is fine, that she’s out of hospital and home safe, Stiles allows himself to relax a little. So, that night while he’s lying on the floor, curled up safe in the middle of all his blankets, he reaches down and starts giving himself a little stroke, which turns into him hunting out his lube and settling in for a nice teasing session. He strokes himself firmly, alternates feather touches to the head, shivering as his stomach tenses, precome blurting against his fingers and dripping down. Pretty soon he’s bucking into his hot, slick hand, the other drawing its nails over his nipple, his flat, trembling, stomach. His balls are drawn up tight, firm and full and slick with dripping lube. He touches them, squeezes, rasping a moan and feeling his body prickle with heat, teeth clenching.

That’s when he realises something’s wrong.

His hips arch off the floor, hand slipping down and tightening over the base of his cock, which feels, thicker than normal – hotter, the skin drawn so tight that he can feel every vein under his fingers. He grips tightly and it sends an ache through his balls and up into his gut. He moans, loudly, and he would be glad his Dad isn’t home if he could think straight, at all.

He needs to come, so badly, and it’s never been this hard for him to get there. He’s sixteen, he swears to God he once came from _looking_ at a bottle of lotion. But now his heart is hammering in him and he’s covered in sweat and he can feel his own claws pricking the skin on his thighs, his own teeth lengthening and crowding his mouth. He takes his dick on both hands and squeezes, sliding his palms in the same direction over and over, exerting as much pressure as he can on the slowly swelling lump at the base of his cock. His eyes squeezing shut and a long, desperate snarl ripping out of his throat as his body locks and he’s coming, helplessly, in these long pulses that only grow more and more intense, like a hot wire is being pulled out of his dick taking his mind and his muscles and his bone marrow with it. He keeps his hand squeezed around his dick, because the one time he tries to let go it feels like his balls are going to drop off they ache so bad. He just keeps squeezing and relaxing his hand, twisting it a little, as more come trickles over his knuckles, and his body shudders and his orgasm finally ends, leaving him weak and wet and shaking, with come spatters across his chest and even his neck.

He drags himself to his feet after long, eternal minutes of just lying there on his nest of a bed, feeling his spent dick throb and the aching bulge in it slowly subside – because it hadn’t gone away when he’d finished coming, even when his dick started to get soft it was still there, angry, hot and begging for more touch, even when he was practically weeping from sensitivity – he gets into his shower on trembling legs and runs it cool, washing and then just standing under the flow, eyes closed.

He grew up kind of a latch-key kid. He’s watched his fair amount of animal planet. He knows what a knot is, and what function it serves in dogs and wolves – it ties a male to its mate, keeps the spunk inside so she gets pregnant.

What he doesn’t get is why it’s happening to _him_.

Or how to make it stop.

And there’s pretty much only one person he can ask.

*

As his Dad’s working and he’s shower fresh, there’s no time like the incredibly disturbing present to pay a visit to his local creepy werewolf.

Stiles puts on clean pants and a shirt, get into his jeep, then gets out again and looks at it. He’s a werewolf, it’s night, he can run to the woods if he wants to. He could.

Being fast is better than being strong he decides, as he bolts across the last road and into the dark woods. He could have worked out or taken steroids to be strong, but being this fast? No one human could move like this, it’s not even just speed, it’s reflexes, it’s the processing speed of his brain that captures and catalogues each sight and sound and smell – tress, earth, smoke, squirrel, water, owl, old metal, spray paint, used condom, deer crap, pine sap...it all just pours through his senses and his mind figures it all out. Maybe it’s an ADD crossed with werewolf thing, Scott’s never mentioned it.

Too soon he’s coming up on Derek’s house, and he can smell Peter’s blood and charred flesh and spent cartridges and chemicals, even though the whole place has been cleared of evidence. He can smell Peter’s body, buried somewhere nearby.

Derek is nowhere to be seen, but that’s not surprising, Stiles can sense him inside the house, in the back room. He walks up the broken porch steps and pushes the door open, crosses the burnt out foyer and heads for the back part of the house, which still has walls and unbroken windows.

Derek is awake, he knows this before he even goes into the room. Though it’s late he can feel Derek’s wakefulness, his watchful edge. Still, when he opens the door, Derek jerks, eyes wide and flashing blue for a split second.

“That has to be the first time I’ve ever surprised you,” Stiles says, “what are you doing in here?”

Derek has a manacle around one wrist, the other end bolted to the wall, recently, judging from the smell of sawdust and oiled tools. There’s blood around his wrist where he’s been pulling, and blood on the dirty mattress he’s sitting on, in big half-shifted hand prints, like he’s been struggling.

“Derek?” it comes out sharper than he meant it to, like it’s a demand for his to explain himself.

“Stiles,” his voice is tense, but low, though Stiles can sense how much Derek wants him to leave (even without werewolf senses he’d know that). But he’s not demanding it, which is just scary, weird. “I need to stay here, alone.”

“Why?” there’s a pang in him at that word, ‘alone’, alone is a bad thing, he knows that better than anyone. And looking at Derek’s tattered mattress makes him think of how his bed feels too big for just him, how he sleeps with his nose smushed into the crook of his elbow now, so his nose is full of scent and warm skin.

“I have to.”

“But, I need to ask you a question, about werewolf stuff, specifically, uh...alpha stuff?” even though his body is telling him that he has nothing to fear from Derek, that Derek is weaker than him, not to mention chained up, Stiles has a hard time telling himself that the werewolf he’s learnt to fear is anything but a reluctant acquaintance who might at any moment decided to kill him. “I uh...it’s kind of...sex, related.”

Derek closes his eyes, possibly to ask the Lord, or whatever God werewolves believe in, for strength.

“I’ll ask Scott,” Stiles says, “this, whatever you’re doing – do you need me?”

Where the hell did that come from? Derek needs him like actual wolves need the protection of chipmunks.

“I’ll be OK.” Derek says.

“Alright, well...call, if you need, anything.” Stiles says, turning and going for the door, feeling like he’s got an actual tail between his legs, and a hot stripe of alpha anger up his spine telling him that Derek is dismissing him, and it’s not his place to do that.

“Stiles?” Derek calls.

He turns around.

“Are you alright? Since...”

“Me? Yeah, fine. Superpowered, wolfy babe magnet, what’s not to love, right?”

He leaves before Derek forces him to lie again.

*

He leaves his dick alone for a week, and, needless to say he doesn’t ask Scott anything. Mostly because, if Scott had the same problem, there was no way he’d be keeping quiet about it. He’d have told him the first time it happened. No, this is definitely an alpha thing.

It’s kind of a pity that the only alpha they know is currently rotting under Derek’s house.

He so doesn’t want to think of Peter’s knot, but now he is. Great. At least it’s keeping the urge to have another go at coming like a regular human at bay.

But, because he’s sixteen, it’s only a matter of time before temptation rears its head.

Mostly, it’s because he can’t stop dreaming about sex, much like every other teenager on the planet who has ever wanted to sleep with someone. Only, his dreams have shifted from the usual (Lydia, various situations involving Lydia and Alison and lots of soft, foamy bubbles, Erica and her huge, gorgeous eyes...) into much more serious and worrying stuff. Stuff involving dark forests and dirt under his claws, and the firm pressure of a muscular ass against his hipbones, the smell of sweat and the heat in his blood thundering with _pack_.

So, he breaks, and one morning when he wakes up harder than college level algebra, he wraps a hand around himself without even thinking.

Luckily, his Dad’s at work already.

This time, if anything, it’s even worse. It’s like the cold little, lonely ache under his rips intensifies, even as his cock throbs and his balls ache like he’s trying to come molten silver, and his _knot_ (he still can’t believe it) is swollen and the weight and heat of it makes his belly squirm and his heart pound, and after 30 agonizing minutes, he finally manages to come, balled up around a pillow with his hips fucking into it furiously, his fingers white around the base of his dick.

He feels the orgasm from the soles of his feet to the roots of his hair and everywhere in between, his nipples flush hot/cold and he can feel the blood zipping up and down his arms and legs. Even the soft touch of a sheet against his ass has him whimpering in over stimulation.

He collapses over the pillow, and his face is wet with tears and sweat. He’s shaking all over.

“Derek,” he says it without thinking, without his brain being fully online, and it comes out cracked in the middle, his mouth is so dry.

The presence of Derek that’s been with him since he became an alpha kind of, flares. It gets stronger, warmer, and he stretches a little, eyes closed and hand rubbing absently through the trail of hair on his stomach.

He can feel it then, feel Derek and his twisted up, awful mind, swimming with doubt and self loathing and anger, and Stiles pulls away from it, but still he can feel Derek, out in the woods, not coming closer and not getting further.

“Derek,” he says again, and sits up, the sweat on him dry and the come flaking from his stomach.

But Derek won’t come, and that makes his skin prickle with anger and offence. Derek’s his Beta, his. If he wants him here he should be here.

And as much as Stiles knows that’s bullshit, that Derek is his own damn person, it still grates on him. He wants Derek next to him, right now. He wants him in the room with him, lying with him on the floor in the tangle of sheets that smell only of him, but should smell of them.

Stiles puts his head in his hands. What the fuck is wrong with him?

*

He starts avoiding Scott.

Scott’s his buddy, his bro, his best-friend, but he’s also a beta, and every time Stiles is around him he can feel their places in the pecking order clearly. Scott can feel it too, he knows – Scott looks to him now before doing anything, and when he says he’s spending time with Alison at the weekend instead coming over for Xbox and nachos, he pauses like he’s waiting for permission.

And part of Stiles likes it, which is...fucked up.

It’s part of having been the best-friend, the sidekick, to the werewolf for months. Before that he and Scott had been equals, but there’s always been someone above Stiles – Jackson, or someone like him, to make him feel, well, like a beta, but a human one. But now he’s top dog (in a manner of speaking) and he has his own Betas, two of them (even if one is keeping himself annoyingly scarce).

But he needs to keep reminding himself that he’s not Scott’s owner, or master or whatever being an Alpha makes you. He doesn’t want to be Peter. He wants to be like himself, only, toothier.

Still, if he wants to get his dick fixed, fast, he needs to push Derek harder. He’s not going to skulk away just because Derek’s a freak with a chain fetish, besides, he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something going on with Derek. In the last week he hasn’t felt Derek move from the house, let alone the woods.

So, after school, Stiles takes his jeep over to Derek’s house and forces himself to stop and knock on the door. It’s pointless, because Derek doesn’t answer, so he just lets himself in and goes through to the back room. He knocks again.

“Derek?” he says, as softly as he can, “hey, long time no creeping, what’s up? You lost your jacket? Out of hair gel?”

He eases the door open and stops stock still.

Derek is exactly where he left him, manacled to the wall. There’s blood all down his arm where he’s been pulling against the metal restraint. The chain is a longer one, and as Stiles looks around the room he realises that Derek had given himself a longer leash because he’s been on it 24-7. There are clean clothes folded in one corner, dirty ones in another. Some packets of dry food and bottles of water at the end of the mattress, he guesses that Derek’s been going out back in the yard to go to the bathroom.

“What the hell?” he says, mouth suddenly dry. Derek looks exhausted, tired and almost sick.

“Stiles, I need, you to go,” Derek says, pointing to the door, “I’m fine.”

Stiles dumps his backpack on the floor and takes off his hoodie. “You’re seriously furitloops if you think I’m leaving.”

“Stiles.”

“Derek,” he can feel his alpha strength surging to the surface, and Derek looks instantly cowed. Stiles feels a tiny bit ill at that. “Derek, it’s OK...tell me how I can help, what’s wrong?”

“You,” Derek is either too tired to lie, or he can’t deceive his alpha, “you, won’t stop.”

“Stop what?” Stiles is picking up a bottle, sees that it’s empty, like the rest, “shit, when did you last drink something? Or eat?” he pulls out his cell phone.

“Calling me,” Derek says.

“No I’m not calling you I’m calling- Scott! Hey, I need you to go to the store, get water and Gatorade and some kind of hot food, like, proper ready to eat food – with meat and vegetables and good, Brady bunch stuff, OK? I need you to bring it out to Derek’s, leave it on the porch and then go home.” He snaps the phone shut, sometimes being an alpha has its perks.

“You don’t stop calling me,” Derek says, looking up at him with part-despairing, part-confused eyes.

“I haven’t spoken to you in a week,” Stiles kneels next to him and puts his hoodie around Derek’s shoulders, then takes a look at his arm. “This needs to come off, where’s the key?”

Derek points to the corner where his dirty clothes are, and Stiles roots around in the pockets of his pants until he finds the key to the manacle. When he unlocks it Derek’s arm just drops into his lap, red and raw. Stiles reaches out and touches it gently. “OK, we’ll but some cream on that, I think I have some from my last lacrosse screw-up.”

He’s just taking the cap off of the cream and starting to apply it to Derek’s arm, when he connects it all together. Maybe being an alpha isn’t making his brain work faster after all.

“Derek...was I calling you this morning?”

Derek, clearly tired out of his mind, is leaning so far forward that his head is practically on Stiles’ shoulder, so Stiles puts his arm out and pulls him the rest of the way, until Derek is nodding against the material of his shirt.

“Oh...” Stiles wets his lips, “OK, I’m sorry about that, I didn’t know I was, calling. I don’t really know anything about this alpha stuff.”

“I don’t,” Derek says, “never had an alpha that wasn’t my Mom, or Laura, and Peter.”

All blood relatives.

Fuck. Stiles can feel his brain working it all out and he wants to stick his own claws in his ears and tear his lobes apart. Why is he so fucking dumb?

He rubs Derek’s back once the cream’s on. “OK, so you locked yourself up, so you wouldn’t come find me?”

Derek nods against him.

“I’m really sorry,” Stiles’ voice cracks, “I didn’t want...I didn’t know it was hurting you this much, at all. You don’t have to-you know-just because I’m the alpha now.”

Derek shakes his head against his shoulder, and Stiles’ phone goes off, a text from Scott that reads simply – “Its outside.”

“I’ll come back in a second,” Stiles says, gently easing Derek from his shoulder and leaning him against the wall. “I’ll be right back.”

Out on the porch is a grocery bag full of bottled water and Gatorade. There’s also a bag of take-out containers from the diner, soup and bread and fries and meatloaf.

“Thank fuck,” Stiles grabs everything and hauls it inside, wasting no time in getting Derek to drink a whole bottle of Gatorade and a bottle of water. Holding the bottle up he watches Derek’s throat work, his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth and chin wet with spilled water.

Stiles fights down the tiniest pang of arousal, because apparently that’s how he’s been hurting Derek, and he doesn’t want to hurt him now. He wants to take care of him.

“Here, eat something,” he offers the takeout containers, and Derek eats bread and drinks the soup and scarfs down the meatloaf faster than Stiles can say ‘heartburn’.

Then Derek leans back on the mattress and curls up with Stiles’ hoodie around him. Stiles finds himself petting Derek’s arm and has to forcibly shift away from him.

“I’m go now,” he says, “I’m sorry I’ll...I’m going to try and fix this, OK? No more calling you, so you can relax here.”

“Stiles,” Derek says, or rather, slurs into the thin pillow under his face.

“What?”

“It’s every night...every night, it calls.”

Stiles’ heart feels like a stone. So it’s not just when he’s been having private issues with his knot, it’s every night. Every night he’s been sending off some signal to Derek, to try and get him to his house, no wonder the guy’s been sticking to the forest, chained to the wall. Derek Hale coming at his call? He suspects Derek would rather chew his own legs off than answer.

And what’s he been calling him for? The desperate need of that morning flashes into his mind, the desire, the compulsion, to push his aching not somewhere tights and hot.

He’s been trying to brainwash Derek into being his bitch, and he hadn’t even known.

He kind of wants to join Peter’s decomposing body in the foundations of the house. He’s a bigger creep than Peter Hale – a man whose personalised number plate would read P3RV0NU.

Derek is snoring softly, his large body soft and careless in sleep, like a German shepherd sprawled in its basket.

Stiles picks himself up and eases away from Derek, out of the house and back to his jeep.

He needs to find a way to un-Alpha himself. Tonight.

Good thing he’s too guilty to sleep.

 

 

 

 


	2. But What Good Is Life Without A Good Struggle?

Turns out if you want to get stuck in a pornado, or watch cats do stupid shit, or find out all the lyrics to Elvis songs or see what happens if you blend _anything_ – the internet is the place to be.

Unfortunately, it is not the place to find out how to un-alpha yourself because you’re turning into some kind of subconsciously predatory sex pest.

The books he liberated from various corners of the library at school, the college library one town over and several occult bookstores are even more useless. He is not a slathering were-beast, he’s just a horny teenager with some kind of psychic link to his pack. To one specific member of his pack. He’s pretty sure Scott would have mentioned if he was getting instant updates every time he got a hard-on.

He squeezes his eyes shut and thumps his hand down on his desk. Just thinking of the exhausted slump of Derek’s body makes him burn with humiliation and guilt. He did that, his stupid libido and his idiotic need to see Peter Hale put down have led to this – to Derek being willing to die in his own house, chained to a wall, rather than chance running into Stiles and getting...well, ‘mounted’ is the word that springs to mind, and it would be hilarious if it was happening to anyone else, but Stiles doesn’t want to be the reason for Derek’s pain. He doesn’t want to cause anyone that kind of harm.

And yet, despite the guilt, the shame of it, there’s still a twinge where his brand-spanking-new knot forms at the thought of Derek, just...Derek, sprawled on that mattress, face down, inviting.

Deaton. That’s who he needs to call. And the embarrassment of that conversation will be worth it if it fixes things for Derek. He has to fix this.

It’s just past two a.m, but Deaton still answers the phone on its second ring. Stiles is using the emergency number that Scott had stored in his phone, and which Stiles had copied into his own cell for wolf-related emergencies a few weeks before, once they were sure Deaton wasn’t the Alpha.

“Stiles, I’ve been waiting for you to call.”

“Uh...so, did Scott tell you, about Peter?”

“I have fairly good idea of what happened in the woods that night.”

Not creepy at all. No wonder they’d thought he was a psycho-wolf. “So, I was calling because, I’m the alpha now and...there are some, issues.”

“Issues like calling your pack without meaning to?”

“How are you doing this?” Stiles checks his walls surreptitiously for cameras.

“Educated guess. Derek hasn’t been to see me yet, when usually he would be the first to come and demand answers. That means he’s staying clear of town, which causes me to believe that he’s avoiding something in town – like his new alpha, for example. He might be proud but, Derek’s a loyal beta, the only reason he’d be avoiding you is if he felt there was some good in it. You’re an alpha, so not having your pack around is going to be stressful, and you’re not experienced enough to control when you call them.”

Stiles really wishes he knew what the fuck was going on, even half the time, when it came to Deaton.

He’d settle for a quarter, he really would.

“What good is there in him chaining himself up in his own house?”

Deaton pauses, and Stiles can practically hear the cogs turning in his brain.

“It doesn’t seem to me that there’s any imminent danger in the situation. I advise that you speak to Derek directly.”

“He won’t talk to me.”

“You’re his alpha.”

Stiles feels a sick, heavy thud in his gut. “I don’t want to make him do something he doesn’t want.”

“You can’t, that’s not what alphas do,” Deaton says patiently, “they command, they call and dispatch their packs, but they can’t force their betas to obey them. If they could, no alpha would ever be brought down by one of their own.”

Oh God, what if Derek kills him, just to get rid of his irritating teenage alpha? He wouldn’t put it past him, Derek has a tendency to go straight for the defcon one scenario – see cutting off his own arm for citation.

“Talk to your pack Stiles,” Deaton says, gently, “that’s all you can do.”

“But, isn’t there some cure for, you know, being the alpha? Like, I lay hands on some other wolf, huff and puff and presto – new alpha?”

“You’re the alpha until you die Stiles,” Deaton says, “and Derek isn’t going to let you die any time soon. I told you, he’s a loyal beta.”

“But-”

“Talk to him,” Deaton says, “I’m going back to bed.”

The line goes dead and Stiles puts the cell down.

Talk to Derek. Like it’s that easy, like Derek is a book club buddy or some random stranger on XBLA that he’s owning at GTA. Talking is Stiles’ strong suit, his strongest, and he’s never had trouble running his mouth in Derek’s direction, mostly because he got the sense that his words just slid over Derek like dust motes, that Derek didn’t care what he said, or even that he was saying anything. Stiles wasn’t the important one to him, Scott was.

Was. Had been. Now he was the alpha, and he knew that whatever he said, it would change Derek, would change things between both of them, and Scott.

Stiles flips his phone open and dials Scott, who also picks up on the second ring. This alpha thing has really done wonders for him in terms of getting noticed.

“Stiles, what’s up? Is it Derek?”

“No, he’s fine. Listen, I need you get over here now.”

“OK, but, why?”

The fact that Scott agrees instantly makes Stiles wince. “Scott, you don’t have to come just because I ask you to.”

“I know that, but you wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.”

“But what if I was asking because I thought it was important and you didn’t, would you still come?”

“What? Stiles,come on - it’s early.”

Stiles sighs. “I need to see Derek and I think he’d feel better if you were there, like a...mitigating influence? Having a big ole fashioned pack meeting. You know he’s been avoiding me.”

“I’d guessed,” Scott said, “where is he, at the house?”

“No,” Stiles said, realising as soon as Scott had asked that Derek had moved, “he’s in the woods.”

“OK, we can go out there and pick his scent up.”

“Fine. Meet you by the highway sign in twenty.”

*

Stiles is the first to the sign, and he waits impatiently for Scott to join him. Derek is somewhere in the woods, not close, but not too far either. He can sense him, and can tell that Derek’s not moving around too much, just staying in the same area. Could be he’s burying Peter in a better location, or brooding, or chasing bunnies. Whatever it is, he isn’t going anywhere, though he must be able to sense Stiles is nearby. He finds that encouraging.

Scott comes jogging up the road a while later, hoodie thrown on over his jeans.

“About time,” Stiles says, standing up from where he’s been sitting under the sign, “he’s still out there. Not getting any closer.”

“You want to go find him?”

“Yeah,” Stiles looks towards the woods. He can see fine, which isn’t really a surprise. “Guess so.”

They tramp through the woods, if two werewolves can be said to tramp anywhere. Stiles is thinking of the night they came out here because he thought it would be cool to find a body. Now, if he never sees another body again it’ll be about a trillion years too soon. And it was Laura, Derek’s sister. His chest is tight at the thought – he’d thought it would be _cool_ , to see Derek’s sister, ripped in half.

Scott must be thinking about it too, because after a while he says, “Do you think Derek’s still mad, that we were out here that night? That Peter turned me?”

“I think maybe he’s mad that it led to this,” he gestures to himself, “he doesn’t hate that you’re a wolf Scott, I’d say he’s about two weeks from building a secret wolf-bros cubhouse.”

He can feel that Scott is pleased at that, knows that it weighs on him, Derek not accepting him as a fellow wolf. The tables have turned on that, like a freaking lazy-susan. A few months ago Scott was adamant that he wanted no part in Derek’s pack.

Of course, now it Stiles’ pack. Not that he’s excelling at being the leader of it.

He keeps sensing Derek, just in case. He hasn’t moved from his original spot, and Stiles is wondering what that means, and trying to quash the alphaish part of him that is pissed at Derek for not coming to him. Maybe that’s why it takes him so long to notice the smell.

 “Do you smell that,” he says to Scott, stopping.

 “What?” Scott whispers.

“Like...cordite?” Stiles is struggling with the scents, there are quite a few, and he’s still not good at separating them. “Gun oil, people, there’s a wolf out there too. Something weird, new. Can’t really get it.”

“Is it Derek?”

Stiles shakes his head. Scott sniffs. “OK, yeah, there’s guns and...maybe five people? Guys.”

Stiles stands still for a moment, mastering his cavorting senses. “They’re coming this way. Get down, over there.”

Scott glances at him worriedly, but slinks off to a clump of ferns near a wide tree. Stiles reaches out his wolfy-mind feelers to Derek, realising that the group of strangers and the wolf are between him and his beta. A possible explanation for Derek sticking to the same spot in the forest, only occasionally moving a small way – he’s hiding, and changing his hiding place every so often for a better view, or to hide himself from a moving enemy.

Without looking at Scott, Stiles moves forwards, keeping low between the trees, going in for a closer look. Whether it’s Alpha-Brain or the same morbid impulse that led him to the woods looking for the rest of Laura Hale, he can’t really guess. But if there are people with guns near Derek, he needs to be there too.

The men are mostly young, and wearing Chris Argent style clothes – jeans and khaki. So, hunters, that’s a good bet. There’s an old guy with a black coat and white hair. He looks like the leader, and he’s carrying a big-ass knife – or maybe a machete. All of them smell like guns and the sour reek of adrenalin fading. The wolf, a tired and older male in what can only be termed hobo pants with an old coat thrown over the top, is hanging from an ankle snare in a tree.

Stiles looks past them across the clearing, and sees Derek in the undergrowth. No human eyes could spot him, but Stiles can see the shift of pale skin under the dark leaves, and the slight shine to his eyes.

“You should’ve stayed away,” the old man is saying, and Stiles looks back at the hunters, “god knows we’ve posted enough warning around town. You have to know the last Alpha here was killed not long ago, but you came any way. Like a dumb animal.”

Stiles can feel his heart rate climbing. There’s a threat, a big one, right in front of him. And his pack is here too, in danger, waiting for him to protect their territory. Logic and his human brain is telling him to stay put, hide until it’s over.

A month ago, that’s probably what he would have done.

Who is he kidding? He’d have done something stupid, and ultimately ineffective. But he would have done something.

This time he can do something that matters.

When the old man takes his machete and levels it against the wolf’s throat, Stiles sees nothing but the same blade at Derek’s neck, or Scott’s and he, quite literally, sees red.

“What the hell?” One of the hunters yells, and Stiles growls again, knowing that they can see his eyes in the dark, glowing red against the pitch blackness of the forest.

As soon as they have guns pointed at him, going off into the woods, he bolts to the next tree and snarls, before sliding into the ferns and scrub, feeling the change rush through him, his claws coming out, hair lengthening and creeping down the sides of his face and over his hands.

He grabs the leg of the nearest hunter and pulls him down, his gun goes off randomly, and Stiles ducks, striking a sudden blow that has the hunter instantly unconscious. It takes everything his has to leap away from him without ripping his throat out. Instead he takes the gun and runs off into the woods, firing upwards as he goes. The other hunters, thinking that one of them is chasing the still snarling Alpha, give chase as well.

Stiles reaches the edge of the woods, where two SUVs are parked. He shoots out the tires and wipes the gun off with his sleeve before tossing it onto the ground. He’s running out of human logic now, itching to use his claws on something – someone.

The hunters come running, but he’s already bounding back into the tree line.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, thought you said there wasn’t an Alpha anymore?” one of the hunters says accusingly. “And where’s Ian?”

Standing just shy of open ground, Stiles turns back to them and raises his voice, which he hardly recognises, his whole mouth is crowded out with fangs.

“There’s a new Alpha, and if you come back here again, I will rip every one of you apart.”

This declaration is followed by a volley of gunfire, which doesn’t come close to hitting him because he’s _fast_.

He waits for a while, in case they decide to come back in to the woods, but they seem more concerned with getting their gear from the cars and walking back into town, tense and armed and casting nervous looks into the woods.

Good. They should be scared.

The high of the run, the chase, and the confrontation has his ears buzzing, his heart pounding. He feels good, and kind of like he wants to howl, so he does, deliriously as he bounds back to where he left his pack and the strange wolf.

It’s not until he smells blood that he starts running in earnest.

In the clearing, there is blood everywhere. He can’t see it  clearly in the dark, but he can smell it. The body in the snare is hanging lifeless, bullet holes through and through the wolf’s stinking clothes.

“Scott! Derek?”

He tries to feel for them, but he’s confused, his head swimming with blood and adrenalin. When Scott appears at his side, Stiles throws himself into him, buries his face in Scott’s neck and breathes in, before grabbing him and looking him in the eye.

“I’m OK,” Scott is shaken, but not hurt, “they...before they ran off, the old guy shot at him.”

A growl leaves Stiles’ throat. “Where’s Derek?”

“I’m fine,” comes Derek’s voice from about twenty yards away, “they’re gone.”

“Not all of them,” Stiles says, leaving them and going the hundred yards or so to where he left the unconscious hunter. He drags him to his feet and pins his limp body to a tree with one hand, the other, claws out, ripping the front of his shirt open.

“Stiles! What are you doing?” Scott is by his side in a moment and Stiles snarls at him.

“Sending a message, they came here...” he can’t think properly, has to struggle with the words, “they cornered my...they-” he presses his claws to the pale belly of the hunter, watching the blood slowly drip from beneath them. He can’t tear his eyes away, wonders what it tastes like.

“Stiles,” Derek says, calmly, from a few feet behind him, “let him go.”

“Don’t, tell me what to do,” Stiles growls, he pushes his claws in further, it’s so easy because they’re so sharp. Then the full weight of Derek’s body hits him and sends him crashing to the forest floor. The hunter’s body falls to the ground, and Stiles gets his hand around Derek’s throat and pushes him off, pins him in the leaf litter and holds him down with his whole body. He shakes Derek roughly.

“They’re in my territory,” he snarls, almost nose to nose with his beta, “mine! And they had you!” He lifts Derek a little, then thumps his shoulders back against the ground, “I am your Alpha...I will-” he’s shaking and he realises that his claws have receded; he relaxes his fists and presses his face to Derek’s neck, inhaling and shuddering as the urge to tear Derek apart mingles uneasily with the urge to tear his shirt open and lick up his chest.

Derek lies very still under him, breathing evenly, forcing the rhythm so that his heart thuds slowly. Stiles listens to it, feels it through his skin, he lets his grip relax and breathes, matching Derek’s pace. After a few moments he pulls away and stands, reaching down awkwardly to offer Derek a hand, which he takes. But as he helps Derek up he realises that the only reason Derek is accepting his hand is that he’s trying to prevent him going Alpha-crazy again.

“OK, we need to get out of here,” Stiles says, not looking at either of them, “you’re both coming back to my house, that’s not negotiable.”

“Alright,” Scott sounds unsure, “are you...OK?”

“No,” Stiles can still feel the blood, the instincts of the wolf, pounding at his temples, “the full moon’s the day after tomorrow. It’s already starting to get worse.”

“Maybe we should go home?” Scott says.

“No!” Stiles snarls, “I need you both where I can take care of you.”

“OK,” Scott says quickly, “we’ll come back with you, but, are you sure you want to be around your Dad?”

“He’s sleeping. He’ll go off to work tomorrow and I won’t see him,” Stiles says, trying to convince himself, “and after school I’ll come to yours and you can chain me up, just like we did for your first full moon, only with less escaping.”

He looks at Derek, who is studiously glaring at the trees. “Derek?”

“We’re safer together,” he says, voice flat, “it’s the best plan we have.”

Stiles turns away, not wanting to look at Derek’s thunderous brows and tight lipped mouth. He’s making him miserable and he doesn’t know how to stop it. The only thing he can do is lead them out of the woods, in the opposite direction to the hunters. They loop round and eventually get back to Stiles’ house. Scott and Derek climb in through the window, and Stiles follows them up.

The room is dark, and he quickly grabs the nest of blankets from the floor and flings them over the bare bed. He realises that it’s going to be awkward, there’s no way all three of them can fit on the bed, and even if they could he and Scott haven’t shared since they were about ten, and there’s no way he can imagine Derek – 9/10 leather and glare – curled up on his not particularly fresh Marvel heroes bedspread. Derek is, point of fact, tensing his nose in the way people do when they’re trying not to smell something. He’s already taking a seat in Stiles’ desk chair, leaning back and attempting to make himself comfortable, which is pointless, because Derek never looks comfortable unless he’s in the middle of a fight.

Stiles takes the bed, kicking off his sneakers and pulling a cover over him, tossing another at Scott, who gives him a wary look before climbing on to the bed as well, his feet down by Stiles’ head. He can live with that (even if Scott’s feet reek, and that’s without wolf senses).

With Scott and Derek breathing in it, the room feels full and warm. Stiles falls asleep quickly.

He wakes up with a start. The room is still dark and Scott is sleeping in a small heap of blankets next to him, snoring lightly. His warmth in the bed is a momentary balm on the sharp sting that is Derek’s absence. Unfortunately, that sting soon becomes a stabbing, dark anger that is all consuming. Derek left when he’d told him not to, not only putting himself in danger, but disregarding Stiles’ authority as his alpha.

He doesn’t even stop to put his sneakers on, just leaps out of the window barefoot and lands in a crouch on the dew-wet lawn, already taking off towards the woods, where he can sense Derek lurking.

His feet pound the asphalt and then the earth of the forest floor. The hunters are long gone, but still he stays alert and low, leaping over obstacles and not even realising he’s on all fours until he reaches the Hale house.

He doesn’t knock, just pushes the door open and goes straight to the back room. Derek is sitting on the mattress there, knees bent and his forehead resting on his steepled fingers.

Stiles doesn’t have the words to explain the betrayal Derek has committed – he growls instead, paces to the far corner and forces himself to stand there, where he can see Derek and the doors leading to the front and rear of the house. He can’t relax his tensed body, and his claws are out

“Stiles,” Derek says softly, coaxingly, “calm down.”

“Don’t, tell me to calm down. I was calm – you ran off,” he drops down the wall into a crouch, “because you’re a stubborn asshole, and now I’m here, protecting you instead of my Dad and Scott.”

“You can always go back.”

Stiles growls again.

Derek looks up, avoiding direct eye contact. “I can protect myself.”

“And you’d rather leave than protect the rest of your pack,” Stiles can feel the rage in him like a living thing, a real wolf under his skin, begging him to claw off his human flesh and let it loose.  “because we’re not good enough? Because Peter made us, and you always thought he made a mistake?”

Derek says nothing.

Stiles leaps up straight, he can feel his muscles cording and thickening, hair prickling down his neck. The change, never far away since he was bitten, is now only ever a second from breaking over him. Still two days to go before the full moon. He might not last.

“If you want this so bad, take it,” Stiles growls, “I’m not the alpha you want  - so take it from me.”

Derek is frozen, tense but unmoving.

“Take it!” Stiles shouts, making the walls ring with his voice.

Derek twitches at the sudden shout, but otherwise doesn’t move.

Stiles  clenches his fists and tries to make his thoughts, red hot and frantic as they are, slow down and make sense to him, so he can get them in to words.

“I might have hurt you, but it I didn’t know I was doing it,” Stiles says, forcing himself to say the words, rather than snarling them, “this, you know what you’re doing. You won’t help me work out what this thing means for me, won’t protect Scott, or keep the hunters away. Peter was  a psycho, but you, you’re just selfish. You’re no help to us – and if you don’t want us as pack, then we don’t want you. You’re out Derek.”

Derek’s head snaps up, eyes burning the palest blue, wide open, and if Stiles didn’t know him better, he’d say that Derek looked shocked, and broken.

As it is, he knows nothing can break Derek. Derek doesn’t care enough for anything to affect him like that.

“Stay away from Scott, from me,” Stiles almost smiles, almost, “not like you have any problem doing that.

He turns away, because looking at Derek is making him feel unstable and weak, as he takes one step after the other, his bare feet on the rough wood of the ash strewn floor, he hears movement behind him, the shuffling, thudding of Derek pacing the floor, striking out at the walls.

He doesn’t turn back, though everything in him is screaming for him to go back to his beta – to bring Derek back into the heart of his pack, currently the warm cocoon of his duvet, where Scott is still sleeping.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t stop running home, even when he hears the first agonised howl burst over the woods, flying up to the cold sky, where the moon is almost full.

 

 


	3. Maybe It's In My DNA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This went darker places than I thought it would, be warned for dub-con though instinctual behaviour and violent sex.

Stiles climbs back into his window just in time to see Scott rolling over and blinking awake.

“You went out?”

“Yeah, I had to uh...” Stiles scrubs his filthy feet across the rug, “Derek left, so I went to check on him.”

“He OK?”

“He’s fine,” Stiles rubs his palms together, restoring feeling to his cold hands, “he’s out of the pack. If this even is a pack.”

“He left?”

“I kicked him out,” he sits down on the bed, the heat of anger left him on his way home, followed by the echo of that torn apart howl. He feels cold and young and unbearably small.

He wants Derek back. With him, in this room.

“You...wow,” Scott climbs out of bed and slides over to sit next to him. “Guess he must have taken that hard.”

Stiles snorts, “Yeah, he was so looking forward to being my beta for the rest of his life.”

“Well, I know he’s been acting mad about it, but, it’s Derek. Pack, for him, it’s important. You saw the way he was with Peter when he came back – the guy killed his sister and Derek was following him around like a baby duck.”

“So I’m a less attractive alpha than Crazy Uncle Peter? Great.” Stiles sighs, “he doesn’t want us, he’s been avoiding us for weeks, so...he’s out now. He can be happy by himself.”

“What about the full moon? It’s tomorrow.”

“You can help, right? Come chain me up and feed me jerky?”

Scott looks worried. “I don’t know. You’re an alpha, I might not be able to lock you up.”

Stiles feels a chill down his spine. He’s thinking of his Dad, of Melissa and Lydia and Alison and Coach and all the other people he might go after if he gets lose. He can’t let that happen.

“We can find somewhere really, really secure. I’ll google. We’ll be good.”

“Alright,” Scott doesn’t seem convinced, and neither is Stiles, but he thinks that maybe if he acts sure, he’ll find a way to make everything OK. So he’s an alpha, that doesn’t make him a monster, he’s still himself. He’s not going to hurt anyone.

At school the next day,  in their final class, Stiles has his nose buried in his chemistry book, ostensibly reading about covalent bonds, but really scanning pages of computer printouts on abandoned buildings and sewer tunnels in Beacon Hills.

“Stiles!” Harris snaps the book shut, nearly crushing Stiles’ nose in the process. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

“Sorry,” Stiles tries to conjure up a smile, “independent project.”

“Stay after class,” Harris drawls, and Stiles feels himself droop in his seat. Great.

After class he goes up to the desk at the front and stands awkwardly watching Harris grade pop quiz papers. Scott gives him a worried look as he leaves, but Stiles winks, he’s going to be fine. It’s just Harris.

After standing still for about twenty minutes, waiting for Harris to finish grading, Stiles gets fidgety.

“What do you want me to-”

“Shut up,” Harris says, without looking at him.

Stiles snaps his mouth shut with a click, then, because it’s him, he opens it again. “I just wanted to ask what you want-”

Harries sighs and flips the last paper over. “Stiles, there’s nothing for you to do but stand there, keep your  mouth shut and learn not to bring whatever _fascinating_ subject your obsessed with this week into my classroom.” He glances up, “Perhaps we should call your father in to discuss some more effective treatment for you, clearly that Aderall isn’t enough to keep your brain on your work.”

“I’m fine.”

“And that’s another half hour you’ll be staying behind.”

“But-”

“And another.”

“You didn’t say you were going to keep me longer if I-”

“That’s two hours – and yes, I added an extra thirty minutes because you’re getting on my last, nerve.”

Stiles can’t help it, the frustration in him boils over into rage, and he growls, low in his throat.

Harris gives him a pitying, irritated look. “Stiles, you’re not nearly threatening enough to pull off the alpha male jock crap – please don’t try. That’s another half hour.”

Maybe it’s hearing yet another person tearing down his right to his alpha-hood. But Stiles can’t hold it back anymore – his claws pop through his nail beds, and he can feel his teeth lengthening. He has to get out of the room, away from Harris, and he doesn’t think twice before running to the door, flinging it open even as Harris calls after him sprinting down the hall and through the doors to the bathroom.

He leans on the sink, rests his head against the cool glass of the mirror and tries to pull the change back into himself, tries to stop his heart thundering and his head reeling and his skin prickling with heat. But this time it won’t stop, it only gets more urgent, hotter and faster and he can taste blood where he’s bitten his lip.

He wants to rip Harris apart.

He fumbles his cell phone, razor sharp claws ripping his jeans pocket. He manages to hit speed dial one and clutches the wall for support, waiting for Scott to pick up.

“Hey,” Scott answers, and even over the phone Stiles can feel his unease. He can sense that Scott isn’t on campus, but he’s not far.

“Scott, you need to get me somewhere, now. I’m changing.” He rakes his claws on the tiles, he wants to tear and claw and, the rage is like a thick fist in his throat.

“Oh, OK – that’s alright,” Scott says.

“Scott? Are you even listening? Where are you?” Stiles snarls.

“Me? I’m just with Alison, and her Mom and Dad, and hey, her grandpa’s in town too. He’s in the arms business, just like Mr Argent.”

Crap. Hunter. An older, male hunter. The guy from the woods? And Scott is with him? The urgency of the change ramps up, and Stiles feels his nose pop and crunch into a new shape, nostrils tapering and flaring.

“Scott, are you safe?”

“Yeah, sure. But, hey, you just stay put and, you know – I’ll be by later.”

“Scott-”

But the line goes dead. Stiles flings his cell across the bathroom, where it shatters against the tile into pieces of plastic and metal. Shit. He crosses the room and raises clumsy, semi-shifted hands to the window. He has to get out. Get away.

Climbing out of the window and leaping onto the grass is easy, and he sprints across the darkening lacrosse field, faltering only when pain shoots through his arm, or his leg, the change moving forwards. The running makes the rage dim, makes the change easier to take.

 As he hits the treeline he remembers Peter’s alpha form – the huge bipedal black wolf. He’d allowed himself to forget, to hope that he would only change like Scott, a few face ridges, claws, but what if he shifts entirely?

He collapses in the woods, slithering to the ground under a tree and clinging to the earth like he’s about to fall off. His heart is pounding so fast that it’s almost deafening. He feels his jaw strain and click, changing shape.

There’s movement in the trees.

He snarls, like an animal in a trap.

Derek pushes through the undergrowth, appearing at his side and instantly moving to take his arm. Stiles snatches it away and growls.

“Scott texted me, you need to be somewhere safe,” Derek says.

Stiles, almost out of his mind with fear and anger and mistrust, can only snarl again. Derek lowers his head and doesn’t try to touch him, just puts his hands on the ground, so Stiles can see the strip of pale, vulnerable flesh on the back of his neck.

He tips his head. The wolf is stronger now, sending him to a back room in his mind while it takes over, getting him through the change. He leans forwards, hands on Derek’s shoulders, and sniffs the nape of his neck, nose pushing under Derek’s shirt. He draws back with a huff, and gets to his feet, albeit with a cracking of bones and a sudden hit of vertigo.

“I have a safe place,” Derek is saying, softly, his voice a monotone, like you read about on bear warning posters.

Stiles follows Derek through the trees, torn between wanting to run free, and knowing he needs to be safe. The change is almost complete now, he can see it in the pronounced joints in his hands, the tough pads on his fingers, the black gleaming claws, so much longer than he’s seen them before. His skin isn’t furry, but the hair that was there this morning is now longer, if only by a little, more noticeable, like someone gave him a double shot of puberty.

He follows Derek all the way to the edge of the woods, where Derek’s car is parked. Walking in sneakers when his feet have changed, with what is definitely a shiny black claw on his ankle? Not comfortable. He climbs into the passenger seat and leans back, closing his eyes.

The journey is silent, and he concentrates on the sound of Derek breathing, the light shiver in his heart as it beats – anticipation, nerves. The car smells like him.

“Here it is,” Derek says quietly.

Stiles looks through the windshield. It’s properly dark now, and they’re outside the old transit warehouse, where train cars are kept in storage.

“There are chains inside,” Derek says.

Stiles growls.

“I can put them on you and go.” Derek offers.

He climbs out of the car and starts walking towards the building. Derek follows. He hauls open the door of the warehouse with so little effort that it actually scares him. Inside he can see perfectly in the oil and dust scented dark. There are traces of Derek in the air as well, soft, sleepy traces of warm hair and skin.

“You sleep here,” he says, walking inside and listening to Derek close the door behind him in two effortful jerks.

“Sometimes.”

He walks across the concrete to a rusted out train car, inside of it there’s a mattress and a pile of blankets, folded neatly at the end. There are also chains on the mattress, in a coil, with heavy cuffs attached, one end of the chains disappears into the wall of the car, then reappears – fastened to a steel support.

Even through his destructive urge has been banked down by the presence of a deferential beta, Stiles feels a leap of fury at the sight of the chains. He whips round and glares at Derek in the dark.

“No.”

“OK,” Derek climbs into the train car and moves the chains to one side. “How about we just sit?”

Stiles watches him closely as Derek sits down on the mattress, but after a few seconds he takes  a seat himself, leaning his elbows on his knees and clenching his fists.

“You’re controlling it,” Derek says quietly, after a while, “better than Scott.”

“I watched him, remember?” Stiles takes a breath full of the sleepy, warm smell of Derek, “it’s uh...it’s kind of coming in waves? I can feel it, getting stronger, then, going away. But it comes back, more of it.”

The smell is tapping right down into the pit of his belly, making it warm and making his heart thump harder. He remembered telling Scott that nothing would raise his heart rate like Alison – shakes his head to clear it, but it doesn’t help. His skin prickles with something more than the change, and his hands itch not to rip and tear, but to touch, more than that – fuck. The base of his dick feels hot and tight and he knows it’s his knot, the knot that’s been frustrating him for weeks.

The cold metal of a cuff goes around his wrist, and by the time he’s leapt to his feet, snarling, Derek is on the other side of the car, hanging on to the door.

Stiles opens his mouth and full on roars, pulling on the cuff around his arm as he tries to get to the beta that dared lock him up. One clawed hand reaching out and slashing the air.

Derek doesn’t say anything, just leaves the car, and after a few seconds, Stiles hears him dragging something over the floor, then sitting down.

He snarls and howls, pulls on the cuff until his wrist is bloody, claws the mattress and blankets apart for daring to smell like Derek, and only then does he turn on himself, all his alpha rage coming to the fore, mixing badly with his self-loathing until he’s clawing at his own skin.

That’s when Derek comes back.

“Stiles...stop.”

He snarls, claws dripping blood as he swings around and glares at him.

“Stiles,” Derek is pale and reeks of worry and desperation, “please.”

Stiles hears the concern in Derek’s voice, and he forces his brain to work against the tide of alpha heat and anger. He holds up his hand, the claws won’t recede, but he holds it out anyway.

Derek looks at him, edges a little closer and reaches out.

“You want me, here?”

Stiles marshals all his remaining control, jerks his head in a quick nod.

Derek comes a little closer and then stops, looks at him. Stiles is quickly losing the hold he has on himself, he tries to keep his breathing even but he’s losing, losing himself, and Derek is changing in his eyes – from reluctant ally and werewolf go-to, to the disobedient beta he threw out of his pack.

He’s still holding his hand up, but more like a warning now. Derek can’t come closer, Stiles honestly doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does.

But Derek isn’t leaving. He’s breathing slowly through his nose, smelling God knows what because Stiles doesn’t know how he feels. He’s made up of too many parts now, there’s too much under his skin and he needs to run, to howl and tear flesh and bury himself in a burrow until he’s far, far away from the confusing smells and sounds and wants that are tearing him apart inside.

Then Derek raises his arms, sliding his shirt off and dropping it, before starting on his pants. Stiles’ whole body burns, and suddenly his whole mind, the wolf and the human, are focused down to a point. Derek.

Derek undresses like he’s alone in his apartment, quickly and practically. He comes towards him, very slowly, holding a hand out, which Stiles sniffs. And then Derek’s past him, lying down on the mattress, slightly on his belly, legs open slightly.

Stiles is on him within half a second.

Derek’s body is hot and smells of the woods and desire and apprehension and _Stiles_. He can smell himself on Derek’s skin and it makes him groan, burying his nose in Derek’s throat as he pushes his legs open and pushes clawed hands down to rip the front of his jeans apart. Opening his mouth he presses his teeth into the back of Derek’s neck, hands pushing at Derek’s thighs, clutching at his stomach, which tenses under his rough fingers.

Then he’s pushing, hard, against Derek’s body, forcing himself inside, tight and dry and fighting him even as he pulls Derek back towards him, working his way inside. Derek’s breath hitches, and he growls low and soft and pleading, shoulders tense with pain, and Stiles’ whole body is on fire and his senses are full of Derek, and when he’s finally inside him he lets out a moan that is mostly howl, and entirely agonised. The pleasure of holding Derek’s body under his, feeling it shiver and buck as he pushes into him, it’s absolute. He plasters himself to Derek’s back, arms around him as he thrusts into him, and Derek makes small sounds of pleasure and pain, and begging whines that set Stiles’ skin on fire all over again.

Each thrust gets easier, as Derek’s body stops fighting him. Stiles has him pinned down, caged in which his limbs, and his senses are full of the smell of sweat and blood, the claw marks on Derek’s skin, and the helpless tilt of his head, pressed on its side into the filthy mattress, mouth open and growling, moaning. He curls his clawed hand into Derek’s hair and fucks, mindlessly, chasing the completion that had eluded him since he got the bite.

Thrusting gets harder, not because Derek is dry, tight, but because he can feel his knot swelling, making each pull more of a struggle, each thrust in an easy one until his swelling knot hits Derek’s rim and has to be forced in.

Derek is seemingly unable to keep still, his body jumps with shivers and shudders, the groans faded to whining, a frantic, uncoordinated humping of the mattress. Stiles screws his eyes shut and lets out a pained grunt as the knot catches inside his beta and refuses to come out again. The heat, the tight clamping of Derek’s insides around his burning dick makes his body shudder. He presses his face to the side of Derek’s throat and grinds, deeply, over and over, the only thing he can do to get closer to orgasm.

Coming is like dying, only it goes on forever, long past the point of urgency, until his toes are curled and he can’t breathe and can only hold on and scrunch his eyes closed until it’s over, the whole, glorious burning mess of it, sealed up tight inside his beta. Somewhere in all that desperate, muscle seizing ecstasy he feels Derek come, and come again, wringing the life out of him as he jerks desperately against the mattress.

Shivering with aftershocks, he rests his head on Derek’s back and listens to his choked off whines and whimpers as he clenches around his over sensitized dick, squeezing him and his come and making him shudder all over again.

He licks the sweat from the nape of Derek’s neck, listens to him gasp and sob and wrings another orgasm out of him without even moving, not that he could move. His legs are numb and every part of him is slowly falling asleep.

His belly is hot from the pressure of Derek’s back against it, and he snuffles at his beta’s damp and curling hair, blissfully blind.

*

Stiles jerks awake in the dark.

It’s not truly dark, his wolfy nightvision sees to that, but there’s no light, and even wolves struggle to see without the illumination of stars, or the moon. There’s a strong smell of dust, mildew, sweat and come. And blood. Too much blood.

He sits up, and looks to the slim space between him and the rusted wall of the train car. There’s Derek, and until a few seconds ago Stiles was curled protectively against his back, sleeping.

Now he doesn’t think he’ll ever sleep again.

Even in the small amount of light there is, he can half see, half smell, the blood on Derek’s thighs. The blood that’s dried on his skin along with Stiles’ come, all of that come marbled through with blood. There’s blood from claw scratches, since healed, on Derek’s thighs and back and stomach.

Stiles looks down, realises that Derek’s blood is on his chest, his stomach, matted in his pubic hair. He forces himself to swallow down bile.

“Derek?” his throat clicks, dry and strained. “Derek, wake up.”

Derek stirs slowly, stretches languidly and turns over, looking up at him. Stiles can’t understand why he looks so, normal, more than that – Derek usually looks at least semi-furious when he sees him, or at least, borderline over-serious. At the moment he looks relaxed, only a slight frown pinching his brows.

“What is it?” he says.

“Are...” Stiles folds his arms across his bare chest, suddenly aware that he is very, very naked. “Are you OK?”

Derek sits up quickly, slight frown becoming a look of sudden understanding. “I’m fine.”

The wince as he settles himself upright makes Stiles want to throw up.

“There’s blood everywhere. On you,” he wipes his hand on his leg and flakes of dried blood come off, “on me.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Derek reaches for him, but Stiles jerks away, twists off the mattress and nearly trips over. He grabs one of the musty blankets and wraps his around his shoulders.

“Don’t worry?” his voice is a pre-pubescent squeak. “There’s blood all over you because I clawed the shit out of you. And I...” he gestures, too horrified and embarrassed to say the words, “I, hurt you, when I...”

“And that’s OK,” Derek says, softly, “I knew what was going to happen when I came in here. I’m OK.”

“You knew...?” Stiles shakes his head, “you knew I was going to tear...and that’s just – fine? That’s not fine, there are about a hundred reasons why that is not fine,” Stiles can feel himself leaping off into hysteria, but he can’t help it, “you chained yourself up to stop exactly this from happening – this isn’t fine.”

Derek is still naked, apparently not interested in covering himself any time soon. “You’re my alpha.”

There isn’t enough air in the room. And what there is smells like sex and blood and Stiles needs to get out before he hurls over everything. He tries to move for the door, but there’s still a cuff around his wrist, securing him to the wall.

“No,” it falls out of his mouth without him thinking about it, “No I’m not. I’m not your alpha, I’m not your anything. I don’t want to...I don’t want to hurt you, or...any of this, and just because there is something in your born-a-wolf brain that thinks this is OK, that doesn’t make it OK. Derek, I hurt you, I...” he pulls hard on the cuff, “I can’t be here, and neither should you. You should be far, far away from me.”

Derek looks hurt, deeply hurt, somewhere under the shutters that have come down in his eyes, giving him the look that Stiles is most familiar with.

“I am not ‘screwed up’.”

“No, you just drank the freaking Koolaide on this whole ‘alpha’ thing,” Stiles notices a set of keys on the floor in the pile of Derek’s clothes, he kneels down, grabs them, and starts trying them on the cuff.  “And even if you wanted this, which, given that you tried to kill Jackson, and Scott just because Peter told you to, I’m seriously doubting, but even if you did,” the cuff comes off and clatters to the ground, Stiles drops the keys, his hands shaking. “I didn’t.”

The silence is nearly enough to suck all the remaining air out of the room. He needs to go.

“I can’t be here.” Stiles looks around for his clothes, then realises that he tore them to shreds, he feels even more sick than he had been, holds the blanket tighter. He can sense the night outside, he can make it home before anyone’s around to see him.

“Stiles,” Derek stands up to stop him as he makes a move towards the door.

“Please just, stay away from me,” Stiles says, then remembers that alphas don’t make a habit of asking, and forces himself to walk out of the train car before he can have a full blown panic attack.

“I didn’t know that you weren’t-“

“What? Into practically raping  almost complete strangers?” Stiles wheels on him as Derek steps down from the train. “I’m sixteen!” he finds himself shouting, his voice ringing off of the metal walls, “I’m sixteen and my first time wasn’t supposed to be, blood and pain and me so out of it that I didn’t notice I was hurting you. This is not how I pictured...anything. So, please, just...I have done enough. Your family has done more than enough to me and the people I care about – please, just leave me alone. Leave me alone, because I cannot be the person that you let hurt you, because you think that’s OK.”

His eyes are wet, which is hugely embarrassing, but if it that’s the reason Derek doesn’t follow him out of the warehouse, it’s worth it.

He makes his way home, avoiding the main roads and darting through vacant lots and empty alleys. When he finally gets in through his window the sun is coming up. He bundles the blanket in several plastic sacks and takes a shower that leaves his skin raw and red from the heat of the spray. He can still smell the blood on him, but to human eyes he guesses he looks clean; clean and normal and innocent and human, a clumsy virgin, a defenceless geek.

He has never wanted to be all of those things so much as he does right now.

But he’s never going to be any of those things again.

He’s just stepping out of the bathroom when his Dad knocks on the door.

“Time for school.”

“I...uh, I don’t feel great.”

The door handle turns.

“Don’t come in!” Stiles rushes to the door and pushes it closed. “I just need to go back to bed.”

There’s a pause as his Dad seems to weigh up the merits of making him go to school, verses his concern over his son’s strange behaviour, or rather, his stranger behaviour.

“OK, well...you’re going tomorrow, and I’m taking the xbox controller to work with me.”

“That’s fine,” he says, “I’m going to sleep most of the day anyway.”

“Do you want me to get you anything?”

His concerned voice makes Stiles want to smash his own head against the wall.

“No, I’m good.”

“Alright, well, feel better.”

“I will.” Not the worst or biggest lie he’s ever told to his dad, but it still makes him want to cut his tongue out. There is no better, not from this. This is him, for life.

He listens to his dad thud downstairs and out the front door, then he sits down on his bed and runs through the very short list of people he can call for help. Scott, Deaton, possibly even Chris Argent, because apparently the only way out of this nightmare is a wolfs bane bullet to the heart.

In the end, realising he left his cell at the warehouse in his clothes, he pulls on some sweats and a hoodie and gets into his car.

He’s going to get some help from Deaton this time, and he doesn’t care how long it takes or how difficult it is, he’s going to make sure he never does anything like this to anyone again.

 

 


	4. They Always Said That We Would Screw up...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figured this needed another update soonish, just because there's fallout to be handled.

He’s almost at the end of the street when Scott bolts out in front of the Jeep waving his arms.

Stiles pulls up and lets Scott climb in next to him.

“You’re OK!” Scott flings himself across the street and hugs him, before pulling back awkwardly, “I thought...I’m so sorry, I just couldn’t get away from Alison’s grandfather, he’s the old guy that killed that omega, out in the woods.”

“I worked that out,” Stiles managed to raise a smile, “it’s OK.”

“I texted Derek, did he...?”

“He got me away from the school,” Stiles feels himself teetering on the edge of saying something, and Scott frowns.

“What? What is it?”

“I uh...Derek, and me...”

“You...what?”

“We’re...not friends. Doesn’t change anything that he answered one text.”

“You’re being kinda hard on him,” Scott says, “I mean, he helped us out, before last night – he helped me control myself.”

“He’s not like us, Scott. He’s not human, with a side of wolfy extras. He’s a werewolf.”

“But...”

“But nothing,” Stiles says.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Scott asks, “you look kinda pale.”

“I’m always pale, I just need to get some sleep. Look, tonight, with the full moon, I need you to chain me up. I found an abandoned shed a couple of miles out of town, it’s where they used to keep farm equipment. Should be safe.”

“So, we’ll drive out there, I can chain you up and stay with you until it’s over?”

“No, you’re gonna leave.”

“You’re sure that’s the best-”

“I’m sure,” Stiles rubs a hand over his face, “you should probably get to school. I’m ditching today. Gotta see Deaton.”

Scott doesn’t look overly pleased, and Stiles can smell his concern, but he just waits for Scott to climb out of the Jeep, then gives him a wave as he drives off.

He’d come close to telling him everything, but, there was nothing Scott could do to help him. More than that, he didn’t want Scott to look at him like he was...like Peter – some out of control animal. Scott’s his best friend, he has to keep that or he really will be lost.

But when he gets to the animal clinic all the lights are out, and when he tries the door it’s locked. He bangs on it.

“Deaton?”

There’s silence.

“Come on!” he smacks the flat of his hand against the door, claws already extending. He needs help, and the one person who could actually give it to him isn’t here. Deaton could have just given him the answers when he’d called before, but no, he’d pulled his yoda bullshit, and now, now Stiles is stuck.

He climbs back into the Jeep and tries to calm down. He reaches for his cell to try Deaton’s number, but then he remembers, and groans. It’s not in his ripped pants back at the warehouse, it’s at school, smashed to bits on the floor.

He doesn’t care. But now he has to explain to his Dad why he doesn’t have his cell any more. And maybe while he’s at it he should explain some other things, like why Scott is failing all his classes, and Stiles is set to join him, and why his favourite jeans are lying in a warehouse with blood on them, and why he’s not a virgin anymore, and why that’s a bad thing.

He closes his eyes and all he can feel is Derek – out in the woods, skulking.

And the sex...if it could even be called sex, because even in the depths of the weirdest, depression fuelled pornado he’s ever had, he has never seen anything like that. The sex had been, good. In his non-existent frame of reference it was nothing short of phenomenal – he can remember it all the smells, the sounds the feel of Derek’s skin on his, under his claws.

His body goes hot all over, and he rests his head on the wheel. Forget. Forget it all, he tells himself fiercely.

He forces himself to go home, call Deaton on the landline (like some kind of caveperson) and he leaves a message for him.

Then he spends the rest of the day trying fruitlessly to catch up on homework assignments with his headphones on, blasting his delicate werewolf hearing with heavy bass lines. He can almost kid himself that he’s human, if it weren’t for the fact that he can feel Derek, more so now than ever, stronger with every minute, like a clock counting down to when he won’t be able to resist it anymore. The need to see him, feel him.

Counting down to moonrise.

Stiles isn’t dumb, he knows that it’s the moon making it worse. It’s just the science of his condition, a symptom.

Putting aside his nonsensical algebra notes he opens a book on werewolf lore and starts reading, re-reading, fingers tapping on the crinkled pages as he gnaws on his lip. The change. The bite. Pack. Alpha. Beta. Omega – he’s read this, he knows this.

And there’s more. More that he never read, that he skipped because it was stupid, it was bizarre. Too weird to even be real in the context of werewolves and alphas and coma patients that woke up and started killing to settle old grudges.

There’s stuff about mates.

About how alphas, new alphas that have just killed their predecessor or simply outlived them, choose their mate within their first moon cycle. That, so long as the mate is the interest is reciprocated, the coupling is consummated before the full moon.

And it’s gotta be some kind of fantasy, D&D crap, because there’s no way this is his life – but one phrase leaps out at him and makes him feel both cold with dread and somehow...secure – like he’s relieved.

Alphas mate for life.

He snaps the book shut and puts his head in his hands, rubbing his palms over his face. For life. For. Life. And there had been consummation – no denying that. But...for life? Did Derek know that? And what did it even mean ‘reciprocated’? Because there was no way that Derek was really interested in being his mate, not for five seconds, never mind the rest of his life.

Though, given the past year that probably wasn’t going to be as long as he’d once thought.

Derek was pretty gone on the whole ‘obey the alpha’ thing, but gone enough to really believe he wanted this – them – forever?

And Stiles...he has eyes OK? Derek’s hot, but he doesn’t know him – they’ve barely spoken one-on-one, and most of that has been Stiles accusing him of murder. He doesn’t even like Derek, there’s no way in the world that he wants to commit to being an alpha, being a mate, to someone he doesn’t even know.

But even as he thinks it, the moon is rising, invisible in the daylight, but still a presence that he can feel making his skin prickle.

By the time Scott arrives after school, Stiles has packed the chains he got for Scott, plus a set of his Dad’s handcuffs and some extra padlocks and more chains from the garage. He has them all in a backpack, along with clothes and the bathroom stuff he needs to get ready for school.

“You look like crap,” Scott says as soon as he opens the door, “you didn’t sleep today?”

“No.”

“Oh...well, you’re gonna be really tired tomorrow, after the full moon.”

“I know,” they stow Scott’s bike in the back of the jeep and he climbs into the front as Scott gets in the other side. “Are you going to be OK? It affects you too.”

“I’m getting better at controlling it,” Scott said, “what happened last night though, you sounded...kind far gone on the phone.”

“It was alright, but this...I can feel it getting stronger now, and it’s not even dark.”

“You sure you don’t want me there? Just in case the hunters come back?”

“No...no, I handle it. I need to be alone.”

“You’re not telling me something,” Scott says, in a rush.

Stiles keeps his eyes on the road, tries to ignore the little twinge of anger he feels at being spoken to like that by his beta.

“It’s about Derek isn’t it, about last night?” Scott is looking directly at him, and Stiles might have a pretty good poker face, but Scott’s known him a long time. “What happened?”

“Nothing. I just, it’s not a good idea for there to be another wolf around while I’m going through this. Last night, with Derek,  it felt wrong, him being there – because I was vulnerable, because he’s a threat – or, I thought he was a threat.”

“Did you hurt him?” Scott asks, a little jump of fear in his heartbeat.

Stiles can’t actually force any words out, so he just nods.

“But he’s OK? I mean, how bad was it?”

“I scratched him...there was a lot of blood.”

“But he healed? I mean, we heal straight away, so... guess for him a bunch of claw marks are like a paper cut.”

“He was healed by morning,” Stiles said, “I don’t know how long that took.”

“He stayed? All night?”

“Yeah.”

“So he can’t have been worried,” Scott sounds brighter, but still unsure, “if you’d really hurt him, he would have left. Derek’s pretty good at self-preservation.”

Stiles can’t say anything to that. Maybe a few deep scratches and whatever damage he caused when he...maybe that was the kind of thing a werewolf could shrug off. No more painful or worrying than the scratches and soreness a human might have inflicted during sex.

But it wasn’t something that Stiles could shrug off, and he didn’t understand how Derek could be OK with it – he had to be putting up a front, or downplaying it, but why? To make him feel better? The idea of Derek doing anything to spare his feelings was laughable. But maybe Derek just wanted to believe that he’d wanted to do what they’d done, that he hadn’t done it out of twisted loyalty to his alpha.

The old tool shed was corrugated metal on a wood frame, little more than a shack, but far from town and isolated enough that it didn’t need thick walls to keep the noises of an alpha werewolf from prying ears.

Stiles forced the door and found a corner in the dusty interior where a tractor was rusting quietly, its wheels long gone, but the hulk of the body still there.

“Chain me to this.”

He can feel the tension in Scott as he winds the chains around him, fastens the cuffs on him behind his back. Locks the chains in place.

Stiles strains against them and pulls until red flares at his vision. The tractor doesn’t budge.

“OK, we should be good,” he looks up at Scott, “just come pick me up before school, and I’ll drive us in.

“OK,” Scott looks about him uncertainly, “are you sure-”

“Scott,” Stiles fixes him with a look, “I’m sure. Now, go. I don’t want you to be here.”

Scott looks hurt, and Stiles would care about that, will care about it – tomorrow, when he’s himself again. For now he just feels relieved as Scott closes the shed door, and as he listens to his friend cycle away, Stiles closes his eyes and stops trying to fight the change that has been pulling at him for the last hour. The waist of his jeans is soaked in cold sweat, and his knuckles ache from clenching his hands on the steering wheel.

He leans his head back and lets it happen, feels the shifting of his bones, the prickling of his hair, his teeth lengthening, claws splintering his fingers. There’s a relief in feeling the change happen, in not holding it back, but it doesn’t last.

Fighting the chains, claws raking trails in the rusty metal of the tractor, his skin blazing with the need to get out, get free and move, run – it’s hell. He’s trapped and the more he fights the stronger the sense of anger and fear become. The traces of Derek that even the shower couldn’t wash away are undeniable and his alpha senses hone in on the lingering scent until he’s clawing grooves into the dirt trying to get to the door, the woods, his mate. His mate.

He loses himself entirely for hours at a time, only gaining the tiniest amount of self-awareness at the oddest, shortest moments that refuse to last. He feels his throat burn from howling, his body sore from thrashing against the bonds, and finds himself lying at the fullest extent of the chains, as close as he can get to the door – waiting. Because if he can’t get to Derek – Derek will come to him.

But the clarity doesn’t last and before he knows it he’s coming to again – a different position, new aches, new pains – a whole chunk of time missing.

And still Derek doesn’t come.

At last, exhausted, the moon sinking again, taking the change with it, Stiles lies on the packed earth and tries to keep his eyes open. He thinks he hears a whine from beyond the metal walls, but it could be the wind.  

Scott arrives after the sun comes up. He has a change of clothes with him, the ones Stiles left in his Jeep. He also has a thermos of coffee and a bagged breakfast.

Stiles isn’t hungry, but at the same time his body is crying out for fuel, so he gives in and eats cold hashbrowns and bacon while Scott unlocks the chains and packs them away. Stiles dusts as much dirt as he can from his body, changes into clean clothes while Scott waits outside, and joins him by the Jeep.

Only then does Scott ask, “are you OK?”

Stiles manages a nod. “It was...I’m OK now.”

He drives them to school, and it’s not until they’re in the parking lot that he realises that he’s not going. When Scott shuts the door, he puts the Jeep back in gear and drives off, leaving his best friend to gape after him.

He cannot go to school and be normal while this is hanging over him. Until he has answers, real life is on hold.

Or...maybe this is his life now, and everything else is just a sideline.

He pulls up to the animal clinic with a crunch of gravel. There aren’t any lights on inside, but he can see the side door is open, so he goes around and lets himself in. He stops short when he smells Derek, and is just about to bolt out of the door when Derek comes into the exam room, holding a piece of paper.

They stare at each other.

Derek is wearing clothes that have clearly been slept in,  or at least, lain down in, because Derek doesn’t look like he’s gotten a wink more sleep than Stiles has. Stiles swallows and feels very much like he did the first time he laid eyes on Derek in the woods – terminally uncool and very nervous. It’s almost a welcome feeling, familiar.

“Deaton’s not here,” Derek holds up the paper, “it’s for you. Says he’s gone out of the state to help his sister with some pack crisis.”

“Dependable emissary you have there.”

“He’s yours, not mine.”

Stiles doesn’t know what to say to that, and he really, really wants to leave. Derek looks particularly frustrated and grim, and he doesn’t want to be here when whatever he wants to say finally makes its way into the open.

“Stiles.”

“I’m sorry.” The words leap out of his mouth before he can stop them, and as soon as he hears them, he knows he means it, “I was calling you again, wasn’t I? Last night? I’m sorry.”

Derek is standing weirdly to attention, like he’s afraid to drop his guard or he’s waiting for permission to relax. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Stiles says, “what about this isn’t my fault? I dragged Scott out to the woods and got him bit, I got myself turned, I killed Peter, and then I hurt you. This is all my fault.”

“I shouldn’t have gone in there with you.”

Stiles swallows, not wanting to ask, but knowing he has to.

“Why did you?”

Derek isn’t looking at him, is looking at the corner by the door, and Stiles has never, ever, seen him look humiliated, but here it is. It’s all wrong on Derek. Derek Hale who bristles with anger and contempt and DONT TOUCH ME at all times. Now his shoulders are slumped, and he looks tired.

“Derek? Can you please, just...help me understand what the hell is going on. Because I don’t...I don’t understand this. I don’t understand why only months ago, you would barely talk to me, because I was Scott’s human sidekick, and then I became the alpha, and suddenly you want to jump into bed with me. Do you understand that?” he wets his lips nervously.

“You’re the alpha now-”

“Yeah, I’m the alpha. Yay for team Stiles, I’m finally got something going for me – I’m the whole murderous package, but that still doesn’t answer my question, why did you come back for me? Why did you get on that mattress for me?” His face is burning, but he needs to know.

Derek takes a breath and lets it out in a heavy sigh, but Stiles knows he’s playing for time, and he wants to know, he has to know, now.

“Tell me.”

“Because I wanted to,” Derek shrugs, poorly faked nonchalance. Stiles doesn’t need wolf powers to know that.

“Why?”

“Because...”

“Because you’ve been lusting after my hot, scrawny bod since we met?”

“What about you, Stiles?” Derek snaps, “did you want me? Because you didn’t say no.”

“I didn’t say yes.”

The look on Derek’s face is so pained that Stiles wants to claw the words out of the air. But it’s too late, they’ve already detonated between them.

“Derek, I didn’t mean...”

“Yes you did. You’re right – you didn’t say yes. So I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come back, I shouldn’t have made that choice for you. I didn’t know I was going to. I thought I didn’t want to, so I chained myself up and hoped it would go away. Then...I just decided to trust my instincts. I get it, you don’t see it like I do.”

Derek ducks his head and looks towards the door.

“I’d thought about it, before,” Stiles says, his mouth moving without his permission.

The look on Derek’s face is a combination of confusion, and such sharp, painful hope that it cuts Stiles down the middle.

“When Scott and I were in the woods, and you showed up. You’re hot. You know that – I’m probably not the first person to say that. God, you and Lydia are pretty similar, you know? You’re...you’re hot and smart, and...I was looking, and you didn’t notice because, why would you? And because I’m like a magnet for stupid choices I thought about you – about hot, murderous, werewolf Derek Hale.” He pushes a hand through his hair, he is so not rocking the Alpha confidence right now. “So, no. I didn’t want...that – I didn’t want to hurt you – I just wanted...normal. Because I don ‘t understand, that. But I did want you. I do. Thing is...I don’t think you want me. I think all those instincts of yours might work for you, most of the time – but you don’t want me. “

“I don’t do things that I don’t want to do.”

“But I’ll bet you’ve done stuff you thought you wanted, because it felt like you should?” Stiles says, “instincts aren’t all there is. Mine told me to kill that hunter and you stopped me – because it was the best thing to do. My instincts told me there was no way on earth my best friend could be a Hollywood monster, but he is. And yours might be telling you that I’m the catch of the century, but you have a brain Derek – you know that you don’t like me, that you don’t know me.”

Derek looks uncertain for a second, and Stiles, who has always been an excellent and argumentative manipulator, seizes on his chance to convince him.

“It’s just the whole alpha thing. And, clearly me telling you that I’m not your alpha doesn’t make it so. We need to find a way to get you out of the pack.”

“No,” Derek says, his head snapping up.

 “Then what can I do!?” Stiles waves his hands helplessly, “how the hell do I manage this, because I am out of ideas.”

“If you want me to stay away, I will,” Derek says, “but you’re still my pack, you and Scott.”

It hits Stiles then exactly what he’s been trying to do, and he feels a staggering weight of guilt drop down onto him. The pack – Scott, himself and even Peter – that was all Derek had of a family. He didn’t even have a home, or friends. He wasn’t reacting like a human because he didn’t have a human life anymore – just the wolf, and its pack.

“I won’t make you leave the pack, Derek,” he says quietly, “you’re a good beta.”

He can’t miss the way Derek’s whole face is altered slightly by pride and pleasure at the compliment. It makes him feel good, and Stiles edges away from that feeling because complimenting Derek’s werewolf lackey skills should not give him warm-fuzzies.

“But, while you’re keeping your distance, I want you to do something.”

“What?”

“Find somewhere new to live.”

Derek raises his eyebrows.

“Not a ruin, not a warehouse or a hole in the ground or a sewer tunnel – an actual home, with walls and windows and functional plumbing. I don’t want to worry about you getting ambushed by hunters.”

Derek is looking at him like he’s insane. Stiles is a little offended by that –it’s a perfectly reasonable request.

“Fine,” Derek says eventually. “I’ll find somewhere to live.”

 


	5. But Sometimes It's The Only Way

With the full moon behind him Stiles feels cleansed. The strength of the alpha pull on his brain has waned, and he’s more in control of himself – this is a good thing because there’s no time for him to be worried about his obligations/instincts as alpha while Alison’s Grandfather is trying to kill all of them.

Oh yeah, the old psycho who killed the omega in the woods doesn’t seem content with making it impossible for Stiles, Scott or even Derek to roam the woods at night, no, Stiles comes into school one day to find that serial killer Argent is the new principle.

He’s not quite sure how that happened, or what happened to their old principle, but now it’s happened and Stiles is trying his very best to keep his pack safe from his steely glare. Most of the time that means keeping Scott close by, and making sure he still throws himself to the ground when he gets tackled during practice. Between Gerard and Alison’s Mom acting as school secretary, Stiles feels uncomfortably surrounded every moment of every school day.

That’s the only problem really, he’s under cover at school, and at home he can’t really relax around his Dad. Mostly because he’s a werewolf, and on top of that there’s the Derek stuff, and the Argent stuff and...he worries, about his Dad, all the time; whether he’ll get hurt because Stiles got himself bitten, whether he could still look him in the eye if he knew...whether he should turn him, to keep him safe.

The desire to build his pack is growing. More betas means more hands against the Argents, more power for him. He just has to keep telling himself that it would also mean risking exposure and other the deaths of other innocents weighing on him.

There’s no way he would ever turn his Dad into what he is. Never.

But all the stress is taking its toll. He sleeps like the dead, but doesn’t feel like he’s had a single minute of rest. His grades are tanking, his homework is barely legible and half as long as it should be. He doesn’t settle at anything, and it’s not his ADD, that hasn’t been an issue since he got the bite. No, it’s the presence of hunters on his territory, and the miniscule, scattered nature of his pack that grates on him. He wants them close, where he can see them, smell them, sleep with them, touch them. Not that he wants Scott, not in that way just...being able to put his hand on his arm, his head against Scott’s shoulder, would ease some of the aching fear that fills him – fear that he is going to lose them, his betas. His friends, if Derek can be counted as his friend.

Maybe that’s why, when he passes out after scrawling out half of another incomprehensible assignment, he wakes up what feels like seconds later, sprawled on the leafy ground of the woods.

He jerks upright, scrabbling in the leaves as he leaps to his feet, leaves falling from his pyjama pants. He can’t hear hunters, but he can smell lingering traces. They’ve patrolled here, recently, maybe only a few hours ago. Stiles curses under his breath – he’d been running, not conscious of the danger, possibly not conscious at all.

“Stiles?”

It’s Derek, coming out of the shadows, down wind.

“What are you doing out here? It’s not safe,” Stiles says.

“Just getting some things from the house. Why’re you here?”

“I woke up here,” he casts his eyes around at the trees, “are they...”

“No one around. They left hours ago.”

Stiles feels himself relax a little bit. “OK. I should get home.”

“Stay,” Derek says, nodding to the woods, “run.”

There’s something in Stiles bursting to get out, to run through the woods and follow the scents and sounds of the night, the small animals and trails of deer and...

“No,” he shakes his head, “no, and you shouldn’t either.”

Derek stands still for a moment, then crouches, shifting easily until his fangs gleam under the moon.

“Derek,” Stiles says, warning. He’s the alpha, much as he’d like to forget it, and Derek is disobeying.

Derek bounds off into the woods and Stiles curses, follows on bare feet. After a few minutes of whipping through the trees he feels his body prickle, claws coming to the fore, the skin on his feet toughening, body moving differently as he lopes through the forest after Derek’s shadowed form.

A straight pursuit is too easy. Stiles is fast, faster than Derek. He bursts into the trees and loops around Derek, driving him back towards the Hale house, leaping from behind trees with a growl and sending Derek sprinting off, right the way he wants him. Derek smells like adrenalin and excitement, and the sounds that burst from his lips as Stiles chases him are marked with notes of glee, youth, amusement.

Stiles arrives in the Hale clearing, looks around, Derek is nowhere to be seen. He crouches as he moves, sniffing, listening. Derek breaks cover on the porch and sprints back towards the woods – but it’s not a real attempt at evasion, it’s just a tease. Stiles catches him easily, tackling him to the ground and pining him, snuffling happily at the sweaty hollow of his throat.

Derek is panting, half laughing, tipping his head so Stiles can sniff more thoroughly. He swallows and Stiles licks up the shifting column of his throat, tasting the smells of the forest and those of Derek. His throat feels thick with desire, his body going heavy and hot, an ache in his belly.

Derek makes a soft, content sound, lifting his head to rub his nose against Stiles’.

“Stiles,” it’s quiet, barely Derek’s voice at all, at least, not the way Stiles is used to hearing it – it’s not guarded or brusque or sarcastic – just questioning. Stiles feels Derek’s lips brush against his, “Stiles...”

He rolls off of Derek and is on his feet before his body is done screaming at him to lie back down where it’s warm and he can feel Derek’s heartbeat in his own chest. He clenches his fists – human fists, his claws are gone, then there’s dirt flying under his feet and trees whipping past and he’s on his way to the edge of the woods.

Behind him Derek is on his feet and running too, following him. It’s not a chase, but Derek isn’t going away, just pursues him at a distance. Stiles stops after a while, turns and waits for Derek to come forward, he does walking slowly out of the trees.

“Where are you living now?” he asks, pretending that they’re having a normal conversation, like the past few minutes never happened.

“An apartment,” Derek says, back to being his usual self.

“Please tell me you didn’t drag that mattress all the way there from your house.”

“You said find somewhere to live, you didn’t say buy furniture,” Derek says.

“That the only reason you moved? Because I told you?” There’s something so sad and so disturbing about that – like Derek only coming to him that night because he’s his alpha.

“You told me. You were right.”

“Yeah, well...I’m right about a bed, and a couch, and...just, take care of yourself,” Stiles says, exasperated, awkward, “Derek, you’re a person, you deserve to...just take care of yourself, please?”

“How is it?” Derek asks, after a long, weird moment where all they do is look at each other. “Not being with your pack?”

“Honestly? It sucks. Especially now the Argents are everywhere. Kinda starting to understand maybe a tenth of what made Peter so crazy.”

Derek frowns. “I visited.”

“That’s not the same, and you know it. Not the same as being with him all the time, and letting him...letting him just be around you, so he knew you were safe.”

“I’m safe. My apartment it’s...safe.”

Lonely. That’s the word caught on Derek’s tongue, the smell rolling off him like cold, dense mist.

He can feel it then, the lump in his chest that is the words ‘Derek, come home with me’ all screwed up and mashed down until he can’t physically get them out.

He wonders if the same thing is happening to Derek.

“Stay safe,” he says, and watches Derek nod slightly, before he disappears into the woods.

Stiles turns and begins the run home, the tension in his chest doesn’t ease, not even a little, until he hits his mattress and passes out again.

*

He doesn’t sleepwalk, or sleeprun, again until a week later.

When he wakes up, lying on an unfamiliar scratchy couch, he doesn’t freak out. He would have, if he’d still been human, but he’s not, and amongst the smells that saturate the cushions under him, he can detect Derek. Anywhere with the scent of his beta is safe, familiar – at least in part.

He rolls over and sees Derek sitting on the bottom step of a spiral staircase. The space around him is dark, the walls concrete, overhead there are beams. It’s like a warehouse, but with the bare essentials of living dumped in it. There’s a table by the window, the couch he’s lying on, the refrigerator humming by the utilitarian cabinets in the kitchen space, where not even a dish sponge or a pepper mill disturbs the dark, angular shadows.

“It’s very you,” Stiles says, sitting up. He’s wearing his pyjama pants, though there’s mud on them. “You’re being very literally about my advice – you could have bought a coffee table, maybe a TV.”

“Do you remember how you got here?”

Stiles feels a twist in his belly – anxiety, humiliation. “No.”

“I let you in because you were howling in the street.”

More humiliation, followed by a heaping side of irritation and awkwardness. He remembers, or thinks he does, a snatch of wolf-brained vision – Derek at a window up high, and the door into the building resolutely locked. Locked out of his beta’s home.

“Thanks.”

“It can’t happen again, it’s too dangers with the Argent’s on the offensive,” Derek gets up and comes over. He doesn’t sit on the couch but on the floor next to it.

“Why did I even come here?” Stiles mutters, mostly to himself, which is dumb because he already knows why. Because Derek is his beta. His. And he wants him in a way that he doesn’t want Scott.

His wolf wants him that is.

It’s rhetorical but Derek answers anyway. “Because you can’t call for your pack when it’s not safe for them to come to you. You have to go to them.”

“But I’m not howling on Scott’s lawn looking for quality time.”

Derek doesn’t look at him, but there’s a carefulness to his next words. “You spend time with Scott already.”

He could believe that. If he could make himself believe that everything would be OK.

But he can’t, because he’s a little smarter than is good for him, because he remembers the reading he did, about alphas, about mates. He doesn’t get what this is, but he gets some of it, and he knows Derek understands maybe more than him in some respects, but less in others – because Derek has never been an alpha, and he doesn’t know, can’t know, how scared Stiles is of losing him.

Losing him, when he doesn’t even have him.

Derek sighs and leans back against the couch. Without really thinking about it Stiles reaches out and cards his fingers through Derek’s hair. Derek’s makes a quiet sound, part groan, part sigh.

Stiles slides off of the couch and sits next to him on the floor, fingers still tangling in the hair at the nape of Derek’s neck.

“Feels less like I’m petting a dog,” he mutters.

Derek growls softly, playfully, leans  against him and tips his head as Stiles’ fingers wander to his jaw.

“You know I wanted to...well, bad stuff, or really really good stuff, the first time I saw you?” Stiles says, because his ADD might have gone out with his humanity, but his motor mouth is still very much intact, and his brain to mouth filter is probably the only part of him not strengthened by his werewolf transformation. “You were all angry and...eyebrows, and you were hot. It’s a leather jacket badboy thing, speaks to the nerd in me.”

Derek is looking at him like he’s insane, and also like he’s waiting for something, for the other shoe to drop.

“It’s not like I haven’t thought about doing it with a lot of different people. But, I never thought it would be you, in reality I mean. You are just so...out of my league.” Stiles swallows the thickness in his throat, “and then the other night and...I always thought the worst thing would be losing it to someone who just felt bad for me but that, that was worse. Knowing that you don’t, that you’d never thought about me before – and that I wasn’t even really me...” he voice cracks and he has to fight to make it sound normal, even as his heart thunders and his inner alpha is surging against this show of weakness, “I’m trying to be a good alpha, trying to keep everyone safe and I don’t mean to keep showing up around you like some lovesick puppy but It’s...” his hand drops from Derek’s neck, where his fingers have been worrying he stubble there, he tips his head back against the couch until he’s looking at the shadows of the ceiling, feeling the low throb of arousal and hating himself for it, “the other day, in the woods...I almost couldn’t stop myself.”

The words come out as a dry whisper, and for a second there is silence. As silent as it can be for a werewolf listening to every heartbeat, every breath and stutter of pipes in the walls, the sound of traffic outside and the wind against the cold window panes, lonely and howling and begging to be let in.

Then Derek moves, rising to his knees and straddling him easily.

Stiles’ hands go straight for his hips, pressing a little, prepared to push Derek away because this, this isn’t what he wanted. He doesn’t want to be Derek’s alpha, to have this just because circumstances drove him to kill Peter. He wants this, so much that he aches with it – but he wants to deserve it. He knows he doesn’t. He’s not a real alpha, a real anything. He’s just  a kid with the worst luck out of anyone.

Derek’s mouth touches his, soft and entirely human, but it still leaves Stiles gasping. For a second he can’t understand the words that are coming out of Derek’s mouth, a harsh run together whisper like he can’t get them out fast enough or secret enough. Like he doesn’t want to be saying them but has to – because keeping them in is impossible.

His thumb traces Stiles’ lower lip.

“I noticed you in the woods, Stiles. I noticed – noticed this,” he presses his lip lightly, testing the softness of it, “and you smelled like adrenalin and fear and...you were curious.” He brings their faces close together, so close that Stiles can feel his hot breath reflecting off of Derek’s skin. “You were going to cut off my arm – because I needed you to,” he twists, breathing hot and hard against Stiles’ ear, more wolf than ever, and Stiles feels an almost painfully sudden stab of arousal that has him bucking up against Derek’s body.

“You’re my alpha, Stiles. _My_ alpha.”

Stiles doesn’t hear any more. Doesn’t need to hear anymore. Derek wants him. Wanted him. Wants him. Derek, is his, and he belongs...he belongs.

He pushes Derek back, sending him sprawling, and is on him before his beta has time to draw half a breath – a breath he loses quickly in a guttural moan that drowns out the cry of the wind.


	6. People Keep Saying That I'm Doing it Wrong...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long to update! Life is crazy right now.

He has never been this hungry for the taste of someone’s skin before.

Sure, he’s had lonely, desperate moments lying alone in a silent house, wondering what it would be like to have someone, anybody, with him. Someone to hold, to touch and taste and be with. He’s a freaking teenager, of course he’s imagined this, what it would be like. And he had it, for a tiny snatch of time in that warehouse – before he buried the memory in fear and shame. In the moment, knowing Derek wants him, feeling his own want flushing his skin and making him damp with sweat, the wolf and his own mind are beautifully aligned.

Derek is relaxed under him, legs spread and arms above his head where Stiles has put them to better reach the lightly stubbled curve of Derek’s throat, kissing it and rubbing his cheek over the roughness, cooling his lips on Derek’s smooth shoulder. His hands trace the muscles in Derek’s arms, palming and squeezing lightly, admiring their strength.

He kisses him, he’s still not experienced at this, not matter that his blood is screaming that this is what they were built for, but Derek takes his enthusiastic sloppy efforts and coaxes him, shows him better ways of using his lips and tongue, until Stiles wraps his fingers in Derek’s hair, the better to hold him still so he can delve into his mouth.

His hands phase in and out, and even when his claws distort their tips, he uses them gently, trailing them over Derek’s shirt, not sharp enough to snag the fabric, but enough to raise pale pink lines on his skin. Enough to make him arch and slide the shirt up, baring his flat stomach and the thick trail of dark hair there. Stiles, despite his lupine blood, almost purrs as he ducks down and smells him there. Presses open mouthed, stubble burnt kisses to the skin there, tasting sweat and sex and feeling the shudder of Derek’s pulse as his blood thrums to his straining dick.  

He looks up at him, feels his eyes flash, knowing that Derek is seeing alpha red. Derek’s irises gleam blue in response, and Stiles can feel contentment radiating from him. He takes the waist of Derek’s sweats in hand and pulls them down and off, sliding his legs free and tossing the pants into the shadows.

“Take the shirt off,” he says, and his stomach turns over when Derek does just that, sitting up and stripping off the shirt, before lying back down with his arms over his head.

Stiles hasn’t had a chance to look at Derek properly clothed, never mind naked. Up under only a few weeks ago he’d been scared to look him in the eye, now he’s naked to his gaze under the light of the waning moon. Strong, broad and covered in dark hair, his body is the closest to perfection that Stiles has ever seen. Even the scar on his hip, left from some fight or other, gleams like sliver. He slides his hands up Derek’s thighs, feeling the muscle there, the silky hair giving way to crisp, wiry ones at the tops of his thighs and groin, softening as it trails up to his navel. The hair on his chest, when he rubs the tip of his nose in it, is softest of all. His nipples are dark brown, raised into points and Stiles can’t help rubbing his lips over one, pressing the tip of his tongue it. Derek lets out a soft, ‘unh’ and Stiles takes that as permission to move to the other, giving it just a hint of teeth, his fingers finding the other, still wet from his mouth, and thumbing it.

Derek is lying still, his body trembling as he sucks in uneven breaths. He’s hard, and Stiles feels a quiver of nerves, self-consciousness over taking him unexpectedly.

“Can I...”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t hear what I was going to ask.”

“It’s yes,” Derek says firmly, “you’re not going to do anything I don’t want.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Stiles promises.

“I know that,” Derek says, his brow furrowing.

“How?”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Instinct.”

Stiles’ hands shake a little as he touches Derek’s thighs, fingers tracing their way over his hip to the root of his cock, circling it with his index finger and thumb, which presses firmly against the thick vein underneath, making Derek’s breath catch and his hips jerk upwards.

“You know...I’ve never actually touched another person’s dick before,” Stiles finds himself saying, his throat dry, but his mouth impossibly wet, watching a thick drop of slick well from the tip of Derek’s dick, catching on his foreskin and making it shine stickily. “You’re...pretty big, I guess.” He presses his fingers to the skin enfolding the head, which is more visible now, the glans getting darker and pushing forwards.  “I like this, it’s soft.”

He glances at Derek, pleased at the flush on his chest, raising an eyebrow when he sees his beta’s lopsided smile, tinged with uncertainty.

“What?”

“You’re just...last time it was almost all the wolf. I mean, I could feel you in there, but you weren’t letting me see. “

Stiles blinks, wonders when Derek started being able to read him like a road sign. Because he was right – in that warehouse he’d thought Derek only wanted the wolf, wouldn’t be anywhere near him if he didn’t. He’d been that for him, buried himself until he was lost in the instinct, the pull of Derek’s body, the need of the wolf. Now the wolf is calmer, riding side by side with him, as he’s always been – too talkative and too curious.

And that’s apparently how Derek likes him.

“You should say that again, in front of a mirror,” he says, “Mr the-bite-is-a-gift.”

Derek mock growls and Stiles huffs a laugh, bending to kiss Derek’s stomach.

“You’re not the only one that’s curious. You know I haven’t seen you yet.”

Stiles feels a flush scorch up his back. “I’m not as-”

Derek sits up and pulls him forward, so Stiles is straddling his lap, Derek’s nose just touching his.

“I think I’ve actually dreamt about this.”

“Well my lack of abs can’t be as bad as that line.”

Derek frowns in genuine confusion. “Not a line.”

“Oh,” Stiles really, really wants to ask about those dream, specifically about what he did in them and whether they predated his werewolfism. But Derek is naked and he kind of wants to feel all that soft and scratchy hair on his own bare skin, so he bites the wolfsbane bullet and pulls his shirt off, pushing Derek flat on the floor again and standing to strip off his sleep pants.

He can’t really hide all the parts of him that are weird and unattractive, his brain kind of short circuits his embarrassment and he slides back between Derek’s thighs.

“Yeah, I know, I’m practically see-through,” he quips, hoping that if he gets in there first Derek will forgive his too long limbs and sickly skin covered in little brown moles and blue veins under it. His frankly laughable smattering of chest hair, the knobs of his hip bones and the leftways curve of his dick, which is hard and straining into the groove of his hip.

Derek rolls over onto his knees and edges forwards, one hand reaching tentatively for his hip.

Stiles forces himself to stay still, like a scared deer giving itself the ‘I’m sure that noise was only the wind’ talk, which is ridiculous because he is an alpha werewolf – but he’s a teenage alpha werewolf, and Derek has an extra six or seven years of chin ups, running for his life and successful puberty behind him.

He jumps a little when Derek bends his head and buries his face against his hip with a soft moan. He can feel the trace of his tongue against his skin.

“Oh...that’s...you should keep doing that.”

“I could do this,” Derek shifts his attentions to the other hip, where Stiles’ dick, creamy skinned with a shiny pink head quickly disappears into his mouth.

“Uhh,” he clenches his fingers in Derek’s hair, excitement, relief and alpha pride merging into one phenomenal rush. “Good call.”

Derek hums in the affirmative.

Stiles is pretty sure he has never felt this good in his life, his fingers rubbing Derek’s scalp and cupping the back of his skull as Derek redefines everything that Stiles knew about the blow job – this is not hasty porno face fucking, corny as it sounds, he feels...he feels like Derek knows exactly how scared he is, being here, naked and vulnerable in front of someone so perfectly formed, someone who knows so much more about  being a wolf.

 “Derek?”

Derek pulls back, tongue sweeping his lips unselfconsciously. “You OK?”

Stiles drops to his knees and kisses him, nuzzling the side of his face. “Yeah.”

Derek’s hands are warm on his shoulders, rubbing there before sliding down his chest . “So, are we going to-”

Stiles tenses. “Uh...no. If that’s...just, last time I hurt you, so...”

Derek nods, though there’s a pinch to his brow that says he doesn’t quite get it, but they’re still different – one turned, one raised as a wolf, maybe they’re never going to see that night exactly the same way. Stiles’ll settle for Derek getting 98% of him.

“But, uh...I still want to do this,  God do I want to do this, so, just lie back, OK?”

Derek raises his eyebrows, but slowly lies back, stretching out on the floor.

Stiles settles over him, hands pressing his hips as he considers the best approach, wetting his lips nervously.

“Tell me if it’s not good, OK?”

“It’s going to be good,” Derek says, “just take your time.”

There’s something heady about drowning himself in the smell of Derek, of sex and sweat and skin, his mouth filled with the taste of him, the throb of him against his lips. Even the feel of his skin, the crinkly hair against his stroking hand, he didn’t think it could be as intense, doing this rather than what they’d already done, but he was wrong. Derek mutters encouragement, tells him occasionally to press harder here, or touch there, and Stiles takes direction well, knowing that Derek is handing over the tricks he needs to take him apart.

Every time he pulls off to suck in air, to lick up the shaft and rub the head against his cheek, leaving a sticky smear, he looks up and takes in the sight of Derek’s flushed chest, his arched neck, the hand rubbing his nipples until they’re tender and swollen.

He’s fascinated by the noises that spiral out of Derek’s throat, the choked whines and heavy groans, the taught, expectant breaths. He wants to remember how he got each and every one. Even the smacking sounds of his own mouth of Derek’s dick, slick with saliva and precome, even those are turning him on, and every time he lets out a strangled little gulping sound, trying to take him further, Derek answers it with a moan.

“Stiles,” Derek says, voice cracking, “Stiles, you-”

Her bobs his head vigorously, sucking tightly as his hand cups Derek’s balls and squeezes gently, he’s rewarded with the strongest surge of Derek’s scent that he’s ever experienced, the tightening of his balls against his palm, and a spurt of come straight over his tongue. Stiles sucks him until there is no more, until Derek’s breathing is coming fast, higher in pitch, his hips trembling, then he lets him go, slowly releasing Derek’s softening dick to his thigh, where he treats it to a few lingering licks, pressing his tongue to Derek’s balls and inhaling once more before sitting up to look at him – his beta, spread on the floor, flushed and sweating and completely sated.

He lays his body over Derek’s, soaking up the heat radiating from him. Derek’s arms slide around him, eyes closed as he tilts his head for a kiss.

“Do you-?” Derek asks, hand sliding to Stiles’ dick. He whines softly when he feels the slickness there.

“So yeah, that happened,” Stiles says, surprised by his wrecked voice. “That was just...we are doing that again. And everything, just...wow.”

He next thing he knows, he’s sitting up, looking towards the door, tense as a wire and feeling the terrible coldness in his brain, in his chest, where before there was a bond.

Derek is the one to put that awful feeling in to words.

“Scott,” he says, sitting up and looking at Stiles with a furrowed brow.

“I can’t feel him,” Stiles reaches out with his senses, but he doesn’t know where Scott is, can’t sense him anywhere. “Why, why can’t I feel him is he-” he jumps to his feet and grabs his pants, pulling them on and struggling with his shirt. “We need to call his Mom, or, look for him- where is he?”

He can hear Derek pulling on clothes, and only stops his frantic search for Derek’s phone when his beta puts a hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll look for him, now.”

“Together,” Stiles says, “I’m not splitting up.”

“OK, that’s probably the right thing anyway,” Derek says, “here.”

He hands Stiles a spare pair of running shoes, and Stiles looks down at his own bare feet. He can’t feel Scott, and his best friend, his beta, could be dead he needs to get out there now. Why is Derek being so calm?

He stuffs his feet into the shoes and looks up. “Now. OK, we leave now.”

“Stiles,”

“What!?”

“Calm down.”

Stiles feels his claws lengthen, his mouth fill with teeth, “Don’t tell me to calm down. Scott could be dead.”

“And we’ll look for him, and we will find him as soon as we can. And if someone has hurt him we will take care of that – but there are people out there who have nothing to do with this, and you will hurt someone if you go out there in this state.”

Stiles swallows, tries to cling on to his human side and force the wolf down.

“No,” Derek says softly, “you’re the alpha, Scott needs his alpha right now – you just need to control it, not suppress it. He’s your best friend, use that – anchor yourself.”

Stiles holds on to the image of Scott, the two of them sitting on the bench in at the side of the lacrosse field, huddled into their sweats and watching the rest of the team ply while Scott puffs on his inhaler – the cold air making his asthma act up.

“OK...OK, I’m good,” he says nodding to himself. “I’m fine.”

“Alright, let’s start near his house.”

“Derek?” Stiles grabs his arm as they head for the door, he squeezes it, looking up at him.

Derek closes his hand over his briefly, then they part and Derek hauls the door open.

The worst part isn’t losing their fledgling intimacy, Stiles thinks as they run down the stairs to the street, wolf speed being faster than the elevator, it’s that, if the Argents have done anything to hurt Scott, it’ll be up to Derek to stop him from killing each and every one of them.

And in that moment Stiles thinks he would rip through his beta, through Derek, to get to Gerard, if he catches just one whiff of Scott’s blood on his hands.

 

 

 


	7. But I Say It Feels All Right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had some people wondering about how this changes the season 2 canon. Basically - Issac, Erica and Boyd haven't been turned, Jackson hasn't either so - no Kanima. Lydia is still experiencing the same plot line re: Peter Hale, but because she doesn't feature heavily in the story, that's not an angle that's coming into play much.

They reach the frosty grass of Scott’s front yard just as the sky is warming in the east. Stiles stands, brows drawing together, trying to sort through the scent trails that Scott has left day after day for years. Some carry the scent of Scott the wolf, some of Scott the human, there’s Melissa and Stiles himself, Alison, a faint curl of Peter’s scent lingering on the path to the front door, and Scott’s Dad, almost undetectable.

“I can’t find the trail,” he says, turning to Derek, feeling hopeless and angry with himself. “You’re better at this.”

“We can circle out,” Derek suggests, “find the trail that doesn’t match up with where Scott would go usually.”

Stiles swallows down all the things he wants to shout, that he has no idea what he’s doing, that he’s scared and they need to hurry and this is all his fault – and leads Derek off in the opposite direction to school and Alison’s house. All the trails that way lead to the store, or on to the library. In the parking lot of the mall Stiles finds their last dead end and turns on Derek, snarling in frustration.

“He didn’t come this way.”

“We’ll double back.”

“OK...no, wait, shut up,” Stiles shakes his head, “sorry, I just need to think.”

“Alright.” Derek tucks his hands into his jacket pockets and waits.

“If they took him it would be from somewhere where he’d be vulnerable, alone. Somewhere far away from you, because they know you’re in the pack, they probably think you’re the alpha. Shit, that’s too many places. Not school there’s no practice, unless....”

“What?”

“They could have lured him somewhere, used Alison’s phone or, oh God, mine,” Stiles scrubs a hand over his head, “I smashed my phone in the school bathroom, they’d just need the sim and they could text Scott as me, and lure him anywhere. Gerard’s working at the school, Harris could have followed me to the bathroom when I ran out of class, found the phone, handed it in...that’s how they did it.”

“If you were going to try and trap Scott, where would you want him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t think like a wolf, think like you.”

Stiles rubs his fingers together, trying to work out what he’d do if he wanted to get Scott alone, make him vulnerable.

“Out of his element. Far away from the woods, across town from the only other wolf I know exists...somewhere away from civilians.”

“That’s good, keep going.”

“There’s an old parking garage across town, they used to hold parties there. The basement’s only got one way in, and if they got him down there and blocked it, there’s no way he could get through all that concrete. That’s it. That’s where I’d want him.”

“OK, so lets go.”

“What if-”

“We won’t know until we get there,” Derek says, and Stiles sees for the first time that Derek is bristling with anger, as much as he is. He’s controlling himself better, but it’s still there. He’d forgotten that Scott and Derek were pack before he was turned. Scott’s like Derek’s brother,

“Come on,” he taps Derek’s shoulder and takes off at a run. The parking garage, he has to believe that they’ll find Scott there.

A block away he gets the first scent of blood, and knows Derek can smell it too. As they sprint towards the garage it quickly becomes apparent that he was wrong, Scott’s not there, he’s in a warehouse across the street. Still, Stiles is deeply thankful to whatever God watches over werewolves that he managed to get them in the right neighbourhood at least.

At least, until they break down the door into the filthy warehouse ad he stops believing in God entirely.

“Scott!” he runs to him, dropping to his knees and reaching out to touch his best friend’s arm, his chest. “Scott, come on, please...”

“He’s alive,” Derek kneels next to him, and Stiles is so grateful that at least he’s together enough to listen for a heartbeat.

Scott’s blood is all over the floor, spread around them and looking black in the moonlight from above, what little there is of it. His eyes are open and unblinking, a great gash across his chest, so deep that his shirt has flopped away, and Stiles can see ribs in the dark cavern of his split flesh. He’s fighting a complete panic, trying to stop himself sucking air too fast.

“....to hospital-” Derek is saying, “Stiles?”

The touch of Derek’s warm hand on his shoulder, shaking him back into himself, makes him shudder. The air around them smells like sex and death and the blood of his beta. Everything is so wrong and he can’t make himself move.

Derek moves to pick Scott up, and Stiles forces himself into motion, steadying Scott’s body as Derek cradles it.

That’s when he hears the click of a gun’s hammer drawing back.

The shot goes wide, blasting a chunk of concrete support beam into the blood pool, where it skitters stickily.

Stiles turns and finds himself looking into the eyes of one of the hunters from the forest.

The panic clawing at his chest, the fear that coldly electrifies his skin, the guilt and anger at himself – it all gets crushed within a fist of alpha urges. Protect the pack. There is nothing else.

“Derek, take him out of here,” he says.

“Stiles-”

Stiles feels his claws lengthen, his teeth pushing through his gums. “Now!”

He knows Derek has no choice but to obey, and he’ll try and hate himself for that later, for forcing him. But if it saves Scott...if it saves Scott he’d do anything.

Even take on a fully armed hunter.

As Derek takes off behind him, Stiles roars and leaps across the warehouse as the hunter takes aim. He tackles him to the ground and hears the bullet hit the metal struts above them. His claws bite into the man’s flesh like it’s butter, and he snarls into his face, his throat so raw he can taste his own blood. Using all his self control he restrains himself to just ramming the hunter’s head into the floor, knocking him unconscious. For several long minutes he stays close to the hunter, snarling, unable to retract his fangs and claws, he wants to rip him in half and shove his face into the entrails – eat him alive.

Scott. Scott is his anchor, his best friend, he needs him right now – Scott needs him to protect him. He cannot fail again. He can’t.

He has to pull himself away, it actually feels like his human self is pulling back the wolf, the foaming at the jaws rabid animal that wants to kill the man who smells like Scott’s blood.

But that’s not true, because more than half of the human part of him wants to kill him too.

He forces himself out of the warehouse, but instead of following Derek’s scent to the hospital he retraces the hunter’s trail, right to the Argent house. It’s lucky it’s dark, because his fangs and claws are out, he can feel the ridges in his forehead, the hair on his face prickling. He can’t hide that part of himself now.

His jeans are soaked at the knees in blood.

Alison’s window is lit up, cracked open to the night.

It’s easy to climb up there, to catch Alison going through her chemistry text book, her back to him.

He gets a hand over her mouth before she has a chance to scream.

***

“Dad?” Alison calls, “Dad, can you...can you come out here please?”

“Alison, what-” Chris Argent rounds the corner and freezes at the bottom of the stairs.

“Don’t. Move.” Stiles snarls, not taking his hand off of Alison’s arm, or his claws from her throat. “I know the two of you are alone here. So don’t even think about lying to me.”

“Stilinski?” Argent has frozen, but his face is aghast, “the sheriff’s kid, Scott’s friend? What the hell happened to-”

“Scott is on the way to the hospital. He’s probably going to die because of your father,” Stiles growls, “I could smell him and his men all over where we found him. They gutted him, loaded him with wolfs bane and left him to die.”

“Let Alison go,” Argent asks, hands placating, “please.”

“You have a code!” Stiles yells, “Scott has never hurt anyone, and your Dad tried to kill him? Why? To make me, or Derek, lash out? So you’d be justified in killing us?”

Chris, if anything, goes paler. “You’re the alpha, aren’t you?”

Stiles knows his eyes are flashing. “Yeah, great alpha I turned out to be.”

“Dad,” Alison whimpers, and Stiles growls low in his throat.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says, “you have until tomorrow night to get your Dad out of town, with all his men. If you don’t, I will kill them all. I killed Peter Hale before I was even a wolf, I can do it. I will kill every, single one of you. And I will give Alison the bite.”

Alison closes her eyes and shivers.

“If you get him out of here, if you promise no harm will come to my pack, then we will leave your family alone.”

“I can’t do that.” Chris says.

“I am trying very hard to control myself here,” Stiles interrupts, “your family has the blood of my best friend, my beta, on their hands. Not to mention what Kate did to Derek...I am asking you, to not make me a murderer. I’m telling you, to get your Dad out of town before he hurts anyone else in my pack. Wolf or not.”

Chris looks between him and Alison, then sets his jaw.

“I’ll do it. I’ll...just please let her go, and I’ll get him to leave.”

Stiles releases Alison and stands beside her, looking down at Chris Argent. “It’s a deal then.”

He turns to Alison, “You OK?”

She nods, tears vanished as quickly as she produced them. “Fine. Can you ride with me to the hospital, I don’t want to be on my own.”

“Sure.”

He follows her down the stairs and waits while she puts on her coat. The rage inside him has been tempered slightly by Alison’s loyalty to Scott, and by Chris’ obedience.

“Dad?” Alison says, turning to face Chris. “If Scott dies...you will never see me again.”

“Alison...”

She pushes open the front door and goes out to her car, keys already in hand.

“You have a job to be doing,” Stiles says, “I’ll keep her safe. Whatever happens.”

He leaves Chris to his mission, follows in Alison’s wake and climbs into the car. He needs to be with the rest of his pack now, with Scott and Derek, and with Alison too.

He’s scared, deep down inside himself, where no fear has ever penetrated before. He’s terrified that Scott will die, that he’ll lose his best friend, and his anchor.

He’s scared of what he’ll do if that happens.

***

The hospital is a confusing mesh of scents; blood, pain, sorrow, sweat, sour skin, disinfectant, old food, human waste, flowers both new and old, and all the mixing scents of a hundred people, different ones every day, overlaid with heavy trails left by the staff.

He leads Alison through the mess, following Derek and Scott’s combined scent. He can hear people calling after him, probably wondering about the blood on his clothes, the smears of it on his face. He can’t stop, not now.

Melissa is in a waiting room, lank haired and with dark circles under her eyes – she smells like grief and stale coffee.  Derek is nowhere to be seen. Stiles would be angry, worried, but he can sense Derek nearby, knows he’s just giving Melissa some space.

“Stiles?” she stands up and looks him over, “what happened? Were you there when Scott...they said it was some kind of attack, but...who would do that?”

“I got there after,” he says, “Derek, Hale, he brought Scott in, there wasn’t time for an ambulance.”

“Derek?” Melissa doesn’t seem to be taking anything in, and Stiles wants to reach out to her, but she’s always been Scott’s Mom, strong and capable and...he doesn’t know how to help right now. Alison puts her hand on Melissa’s arm and murmurs softly, eyes shiny with tears.

“He’s in surgery,” Melissa says, voice wavering as she lets Alison guide her back to her seat. “They don’t know what’s wrong, he’s not clotting, they’re giving him blood but he’s lost so...” she chokes on the sentence.

“Scott’s strong, he’ll be OK,” Alison says.

“Yeah, he’ll...he has to be fine,” Stiles adds. He can’t feel his mouth moving.

He can feel Scott though, far away, not just in physical distance, but on another level. Scott is draining out of his awareness like water in a cracked jug. Dying. Somewhere Scott is dying.

“I have to...I’ll be back,” he manages, shoves his way out into the corridor and follows his senses to where Derek is sitting in a single chair in a corner by a vending machine.

“I need your phone,” he says, “we need to call Deaton.”

“I already have.”

“And?”

“He doesn’t know what to do. If the blood transfusions clear his bloodstream of wolfsbane there’s hope, but it’ll dilute his healing factor too.”

Derek is smeared with blood and pale as the wall behind him. Stiles doesn’t think, just gets closer and puts his hands on his shoulders, bringing their foreheads together. It’s a tiny comfort, but it’s something.

“What about our blood, mine?”

“I asked, but he didn’t know what would happen.”

“We have to find out.”

“We don’t know-”

“He’s dying in there. I can feel it.”

“If you do this he could still die,” Derek says, “and you’d be weakened, easier to...they might come back, for you.”

“You’re not going to lose me.” He takes Derek’s hand and pulls him up out of the chair. “But we have to do this now, and you have to help me.”

Derek nods. “If it comes to that, if they come to finish the job, I’ll hold them off.”

“You will do no such thing,” Stiles almost snarls, “Derek, you will keep yourself alive and you will stay with the pack – with Alison and Melissa and my Dad, because you deserve a good pack, and they will love you as much as I do.”

If he couldn’t feel Scott’s life waning he’d stay to soak up the look on Derek’s face, but that’s not a moment he gets to have.

They follow Scott’s scent to the operating room, push through the door into the scrub room, looking through the wide window at where Scott is lying on the steel table in a tangle of wires and tubes. There’s blood on the floor, bloody sponges and cloths as well. The trays of used instruments reflect copper coloured under the harsh lights.

“We have to make them do it,” Stiles says, helplessness overwhelming him, “I don’t know how.”

Derek pushes the door to the operating room open and steps inside, Stiles follows, ignoring the shouts of dismay from the surgeon and nurses as the sterile field is breached.

“Do exactly, as I say,” Derek snarls, teeth lengthening, “and you all get to leave this room alive.”

It doesn’t take long for the terrified nurses to set up a transfusion, the surgeon is under Derek’s watchful eye, still trying to stem the flow of Scott’s blood. His face is so pale under the fluorescents, his scent so diminished it’s like he’s already gone.

Stiles grits his teeth as blood starts to flow from his arm into the plastic tubing. It’s attached to Scott amongst all the other monitor wires and tubes that are helping him to breathe.

“You OK?” Derek asks, leaving off his glaring for a moment.

“Yeah. How’s the bleeding?” he looks at the surgeon, frantically cauterising and stuffing with packs.

“No change.”

Stiles closes his eyes and feels himself start to get weaker. He can’t remember the last time he ate something, and now he’s losing blood. If the hunters come back, if Gerard tries something, there’s no way he’ll be able to defend himself, Scott and Derek.

“It’s slowing,” the surgeon says, “he’s...there’s clotting.”

Stiles just nods, leans heavily against the gurney, and doesn’t put up a fight when Derek puts an arm around his waist to hold him up. He can feel the energy inside him waning, and it’s only as he’s blacking out that he realises it’s not just about his body, about the blood. It’s the wolf too, growing weaker.

 

 

 


End file.
